Beginning with Rice

Rice is a grain, the fruit of a grass plant, and the staple food of more than half the world’s population. It now grows in more than one hundred countries, on every continent except Antarctica, although over 90 percent of the world’s rice is still grown in Asia. Rice grows in all kinds of environments, from northern Japan to Peru, from Australia to Senegal, from Spain to southern India, from sea level to an altitude of ten thousand feet. Rice can be grown in flooded paddies, in rivers, or in dry fields watered only by rainfall. Some varieties of rice will grow in very hot temperatures, others in relatively cool climates.