Mary Allen
Rice is a grain like wheat, barley, corn, and many others. They are grains of certain plant species. Originally they were sweet grasses. Since the Stone Age, people have always saved the largest grains until the next spring and used them again for sowing. This is how today’s cereals came about, including rice.
The young rice plants must be dug up and replanted one at a time with more spacing. The rice plant then becomes about half a meter or one and a half meters high. At the top is the panicle, the inflorescence. After fertilization by the wind, the grains grow. Any rice plant can fertilize itself.
Archeology has found that rice was already being cultivated around 10,000 years ago: in China. The plant probably came further west via Persia, ancient Iran. The ancient Romans knew rice as a medicine. Later, people also brought rice to America and Australia.
For about half of all people, rice is the most important food. That is why it is also called staple food. The people to whom this applies live mainly in Asia. A lot of rice is also grown in Africa. In the West, on the other hand, people mostly eat foods made from wheat. Although corn is more commonly grown than rice, it is mostly fed to animals.