It is a bigger source of greenhouse gas than any foodstuff except beef. By starving soils of oxygen, paddy cultivation encourages methane-emitting bacteria. Rice is not merely a casualty of climate change, but also a contributor to it. Rising sea-levels are causing salt to seep into the Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s “rice bowl”. Devastating floods in Pakistan, the fourth-biggest exporter, wiped out 15% of its rice harvest. Patchy monsoon rains and drought last year in India, the world’s biggest rice exporter, led to a reduced harvest and an export ban. Rice is particularly susceptible to extreme conditions and is often grown in places where they are increasingly evident. But the biggest reason may be global warming. Excessive use of pesticides, fertiliser and irrigation have poisoned and depleted soils and groundwater. Urbanisation and industrialisation have made labour and farmland scarcer. The greatest slowdowns were in South-East Asia, where Indonesia and the Philippines-together, home to 400m people-are already big importers. Yields have increased by less than 1% a year over the past decade, much less than in the previous one. Yet that looks increasingly hard-and in some ways undesirable. By one estimate, the world will need to produce almost a third more rice by 2050. And demand for the crop is projected to soar, on the back of population growth in Asia and Africa, another big rice consumer. Asians produce over 90% of rice and get more than a quarter of their calories from it. The starchy grain is the main source of sustenance for over half the world’s population. Asia’s vast rice market is a legacy of that triumph.
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