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Rice Passions
Appears in
By Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Published 1998
Samuel Monclus Sanchez is the director of Productos la Fallera, a large rice company in Valencia. One afternoon we drove together around the flat green watery spaces of the Albufera, the large freshwater lake just outside Valencia, which was a calming change of pace after the traffic and elegant intensity of the city.
As he drove, Samuel talked passionately about the history of rice in Valencia. He told of the time in the eighteenth century when authorities tried to stop rice cultivation in the Albufera, declaring it unsafe because it was thought to be a breeding ground for malarial mosquitos (in fact, growing rice in fresh water does favor the anopheles mosquito, but if the water is brackish or muddy, rice cultivation can reduce malaria). “The local people went on growing rice for themselves, ” Samuel explained. “They had to eat and rice was what would grow in the wet soil.” Rice culture survived, and over time it reestablished itself.