Rice

Rice is the seed of a grass plant that people grow for food. It comes from two main species, one first farmed in Asia and the other in Africa. Rice is the most important food crop in the world. About half of all people on Earth eat it every day.

The rice plant grows two to six feet tall. It has long, thin leaves and clusters of small grains at the top. Each grain is wrapped in a hard outer shell called a husk. Farmers must remove the husk before the rice can be cooked.

Most rice grows in flooded fields called paddies. Farmers flatten the land, build small walls of dirt around it, and let in a few inches of water. The young rice plants grow right up through the water. The flooding helps the rice and keeps weeds from taking over. In hilly places like parts of China, Vietnam, and the Philippines, farmers carve flat steps into the sides of mountains. These step-shaped fields are called terraces. Some terraces in the Philippines are more than 2,000 years old.

People first started growing rice in China about 9,000 years ago, along the Yangtze River. That was thousands of years before the pyramids were built in Egypt. From China, rice farming slowly spread across Asia, then to the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Spanish and Portuguese ships brought rice to the Americas in the 1500s.

Today, China and India grow the most rice. Together, they produce almost half of all the rice in the world. Other big growers include Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Rice comes in thousands of types. White rice and brown rice are the same grain. Brown rice still has its outer layer, called the bran, which holds extra vitamins. White rice has the bran polished off, so it cooks faster but loses some nutrition. Other kinds include sticky rice for sushi, long thin basmati from India, and short fat arborio for Italian risotto.

Rice is woven into many cultures. In Japan, the same word, gohan, means both "cooked rice" and "meal." At many weddings around the world, guests throw rice at the new couple as a wish for a happy life with plenty of food. In parts of India, a baby's first taste of solid food is often a small spoonful of rice, given in a special ceremony. Few foods have fed and shaped so many people for so long.