Rice Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This Rice Essay example is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic, please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

Rice , although produced in similar quantities to wheat and maize, feeds more people on the planet than any other grain and has done so for many centuries. Yet, in many forms of its cultivation it has led to significant environmental modification. The rice plant (Oryza sativa Linn.), often known as paddy (padi), is a varied and adaptable crop. Varieties of the rice plant are adapted to a wide range of environments, and rice will grow across a broad spectrum of climatic and soil types; different cultivars offer variations in taste and texture. Rice is found in the tropics, but also in sub-tropical and warm temperate regions. Some varieties suit unirrigated swidden agricultural systems and may be grown on steep hill slopes; others require a very wet environment, and some will grow best in swamps. The most intensive rice cultivation systems have evolved in places where water is controlled so that it is freely available during planting and growing periods, but absent for ripening and harvesting. Where growing conditions were optimal in this way, it was common for two crops of rice to be harvested each year from the same piece of land-this very high rate of productivity supported high population densities and often complex and stratified societies.

Humans first domesticated rice about 7,000 years ago, probably in China. Its spread and development as a staple food in Asia went hand in hand with the social, economic, and environmental transformation of large parts of the region. Because the control of water often required large-scale operations, involving cooperation or coercion, states and societies emerged that were able not only to exert social control over a wide area, but also to extract surplus from rice producers in the form of labor and crops.

With intensification of cultivation, food output increased and populations expanded in a spiral that led to the emergence of some of the most densely populated agricultural regions in the world. States such as Ayutthiya and Angkor emerged in Southeast Asia, and in southern China and Japan similar regions of intensive cultivation supported large and multifarious social and political units. Such largescale systems often developed in river deltas and floodplains where it was possible to manage water flow through drainage and irrigation. Elsewhere, smaller-scale systems were in evidence in river valleys, where river flow could be diverted, or even on steep hillsides where intricate terracing systems were coupled with the channeling of water supply. In Bali, scarce land resources and tight water management allowed the development of a highly productive rice economy.

Such pre-modern “wet” (or sawah) rice systems were usually characterized by the development of technologies not only for water control and plant cultivation, but also a high degree of innovation regarding issues such as land tenure and social relations, as well as rice production. Although these systems were highly intensive and involved the construction of capital in the form of canals, irrigation works, and transport systems, they were relatively low input systems, reliant on the natural environment and, often, a supply of nutrients from seasonal flooding. Although the rice crop dominated and provided a staple food, biodiversity was high: Many different varieties of rice were cultivated and supplementary food sources (fish, ducks, chickens, tree crops, and off-season crops such as pulses) coexisted alongside and within the rice paddies. Socalled “dry” or rain-fed rice systems were marked by less intensive production and less dependence on water control. Tropical shifting cultivation gardens supported rice with an association with an even wider range of other food sources.

Rice production systems worldwide have been transformed in the past century. In general, colonial authorities preserved and extended many of the traditional rice farming systems in places such as India and Indonesia, though they introduced new techniques for seed selection and breeding. Irrigation and drainage works were sometimes promoted, and expanded transport linkages opened rice farming to new markets and sources of inputs. However, the major transformation of rice production was in the postcolonial period when new technologies associated with the Green Revolution profoundly affected not only rice output, but also the environments, societies, and economies associated with the crop.

At the core of the Green Revolution was the breeding and dissemination of new seed varieties that were high yielding, but more critically, fast growing. They were bred to respond well to artificial oil-derived fertilizers that delivered a nitrogen boost to growing plants. Thus, in a sense, the Green Revolution has involved the conversion of one form of energy (in oil) to another (rice). The new varieties also tended to require even closer management of water supply and, without built-in resistance to pest and disease attack, they often required complementary use of chemical sprays for protection. Because of their rapid growth and high yields, two and three crops per year were possible in many places and output expanded significantly.

Production increased markedly in the established rice producing countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Thailand, but there was also expansion in temperate regions such as the United States, Italy, and Australia. Between 1961 and 2001, world rice production rose from 216 million tons to 598 million tons, yet the area harvested rose from 116 million hectares to only 152 million hectares. To a large extent, this doubling of rice yields over a 40-year period prevented food shortages, and several key rice producing countries such as Indonesia changed from being net importers of their staple food to being exporters.

However, these successes in rice production came at a cost: Biodiversity suffered. Only a small number of new cultivars were introduced, so that the previous diversity in rice paddies was replaced by only a handful of new varieties. The widespread use of chemicals affected other plant and insect life and created significant problems with poisoned waterways, damaged soil structure, and the ability of people to tap traditional supplementary food sources. The new systems also increased dependence, not only on fossil fuel-based fertilizers and chemicals, but also on continued applications of these products just to maintain yields, let alone increase them.

The move to high-input rice farming is also evident. As well as fertilizers and chemicals, farmers have to buy new seeds each year instead of using a portion of the previous year’s crop. The high costs of inputs have meant that larger and wealthier farmers have been able to participate and profit in the new farming systems more than the poor. The latter often go into debt and sometimes lose their land. While many rice farmers in developing countries have done well from the Green Revolution, others have become landless and dependent on wage labor. Rural societies have become more varied and fluid as a result, with greater inequalities between rich and poor. And as new agricultural technologies and seeds have taken hold, the old is being gradually lost: The genetic pool has suffered and many of the old technologies of rice farming have disappeared. Cultural diversity has suffered alongside biodiversity.

There are signs of significant change yet to face rice production. High oil process and neoliberal reforms have put pressure on the heavy use of fertilizers in some places and the subsidization of rice production in Japan and other industrial countries is under threat. Much rice research in recent years has focused on the need to promote lower input and more sustainable systems of cultivation using techniques such as integrated pest management and careful management of fertilizer use and soil quality. It is also possible that genetic modification may create a new revolution in rice production.

Bibliography:

F. Bray, The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies (Blackwell, 1986);
Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Harvard University Press, 2001);
H. Grist, Rice (Longman, 1986);
W. Hamilton, The Art of Rice: Spirit and Sustenance in Asia (UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2003);
Michael Lipton and Richard Longhurst, New Seeds and Poor People (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989);
Vandana Shiva, The Violence of the Green Revolution: Ecological Degradation and Political Conflict in Punjab (Natraj Publishers, 1989).