How the Rice Industry is Contributing to Sustainable Agriculture
This article was written by a guest contributor, Osamu Tsuda. Read about Osamu here.
Rice – everyone knows it, and everyone has (hopefully) eaten it at least once in their lifetime. Even if you don’t have rice as part of your daily diet, you probably consumed it recently in some way, shape, or form without even knowing! Maybe it was in the form of bread, as a milk alternative, puffed in desserts, or even in your pasta. It is a grain that is consumed across the world and is considered a staple food for millions of people. Every year, the world produces approximately 750 million tons of rice, most of which is produced in China, India, and other Asian countries. Even in the United States, rice makes up a significant part of the country’s agricultural economy, with the US comprising approximately half of the world’s rice exporting market (USDA).
The largest consumers in the world are consistent with the rice producers and include China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and other Asian countries. People in these countries eat rice on a daily basis for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and even with the western influence having an impact on the diet, this general trend remains strong. East Asian countries like China, Korea, and Japan have even developed technologically advanced rice cookers, which are as common a household appliance as toasters in the United States.
But as we mentioned before, the rice-supply-chain doesn’t end with direct consumption. People use rice in the making of many other things like Mochi rice cakes, bread made from rice flour (gluten-free), and even milk alternatives like Rice Dream. These are just a few of the many uses that make this grain so popular and important across the world.
What are the different types of rice?
It is worth noting that there is more than just one type of rice. Many might be most familiar with the short-grain white rice that is most commonly used in Asian restaurants and popular foods like fried rice and sushi. You might find this in the grocery store labeled as “sushi rice” (known for its glutenous and dense characteristics). However, as you continue to look, you’ll probably notice other types like Basmati, Jasmine, or other long-grained rice varieties commonly used in South and Southeast Asian cuisines such as Indian or Thai food. These are often lighter and drier than the short-grain rice, and tend to be known for their distinct nutty aroma when cooked. If the store has a reasonably diverse selection, you may even come across other colorful grains like Wild rice, Black rice, Red rice, Sticky rice, and Arborio rice, which all have their own unique flavors, textures, and applications. You might now be wondering “What about brown rice? That’s also a type of rice too, right?”. To an extent, yes; brown rice has grown to become recognized by some cultures as a distinct “type” of rice, but in fact, it is just an under-processed version of one of the rice types we already mentioned above! This process of changing the grain color is known as rice polishing.
What is Brown Rice, really?
Brown rice is often considered the healthy alternative to white rice; some love it, others, like myself don’t care for it too much. Since it looks and tastes so different from white rice, due to its brown coating, people often mistake it for another type of rice altogether (like red or black rice). However, brown rice is not a different species, rather a version of white rice that has undergone less processing time. That is to say, all white rice was once brown rice. Similar to how wheat flour becomes whiter as it undergoes processing, as rice is polished, it slowly becomes whiter. In terms of physical differences between brown and white rice, because of the extra layer, brown rice tends to be sweeter in flavor and chewier compared to white rice, which many times is less flavorful and softer in texture.
OK, but what does this have to do with sustainability?
In order to tie this into sustainable agriculture, we must first understand how rice is grown. For those who are unfamiliar with rice production, the process begins in what some might call a swamp or a bog. These flooded fields are known as checks or rice paddies and, within them, rice is planted in 6-8 inches of standing water. It is usually best to plant rice during the rainy months when water is most abundant. Traditionally, farmers trudged knee-deep through the muddy fields and planted the seedlings by hand (which could take a very long time), and each seedling would only produce less than a handful of grain, thus requiring thousands of seedlings to be planted in order to grow enough rice to last the winter.
While this is the process still used in many countries around the world, more technologically advanced nations like Japan and the United States have developed machines that speed up the process and make it easier for the farmers to plant their rice. In Japan, where field sizes are small and are only separated by small dirt or concrete barriers, the industry has developed a specialized tractor that transplants the seedlings and applies fertilizer as it drives across the field. While hand planting is still part of the process in areas that are inaccessible by the tractor, this drastically speeds up the process and has reduced an entire day’s job to just a few hours! In larger countries like the United States where land is readily available and scaled production is a top priority, farmers use drones or helicopters to plant their rice seeds from the air. While this process might not be as thorough as planting by hand, the speed and mass production capabilities make up for any inefficiencies.
Once the rice grows and the fields dry up in the fall, the rice is harvested and goes through the preliminary process of polishing, where the rice husk or shell is taken off. This produces brown rice. Most people polish the grain again to ultimately get white rice. Regardless of how much the rice is polished during this second phase, it is commonly understood that all rice needs to be rinsed in water multiple times before cooking to remove the remaining sticky, fine bran layer, also known as Hada-Nuka, which produces cloudy water during the initial rinse cycle.
While the average person, including myself, never really thinks about what’s in this cloudy, starch-filled water nor how it might affect the environment, it’s actually something we need to be concerned about, as it happens to have a significant impact on our drinking water and environment.
But how much of an effect does this have on our environment?
As the world’s population grows, the contamination of our environment also increases, and even though many nations have developed technologies to increase efficiency in energy consumption and reduce pollution, the rate of this change is simply too slow to catch up to the rate at which our planet is being negatively impacted by human activity. Water “health” is a topic often discussed in relation to our future existence on this planet. However, when we think of water contamination, the stereotypical image we often imagine is that of the Lorax from Dr. Seuss in which large factories are spewing black smoke into our atmosphere and dumping murky liquids into our streams. While that stereotypical image does still manifest itself around the world, there are other lesser-known sources of environmental pollution. An example of this is fertilizer-contaminated runoff from farm fields that directly enters streams within their watershed and can cause imbalances in water nutrient levels that lead to damaging phenomena like algal blooms.
Believe it or not, rinsing your rice and pouring that white water (which contains the fine bran) down the drain is similar to pouring fertilizer into the streams. While a certain level of nutrients is needed for organisms to survive, an excessive amount can lead to unhealthy water bodies. You can think of it similarly to eating: you need food to survive but eating too much can lead to obesity and other health issues. The exact effects on the streams and water bodies can vary, but they often produce toxic environments, in which the aquatic organisms can no longer live, thus leading to the degradation of overall water quality. Often, rice is rinsed multiple times and, in Asia, the average person consumes over 100 kilograms of rice, annually. When considering the millions of people rinsing their rice every day, the cumulative effects are massive.
What is sustainable rice consumption and how can it be done?
While the majority of rice consumed today is polished using traditional methods discussed above, Japan has developed a new technology that eliminates the extra-fine bran, or Hadanuka that produces the cloudy, contaminated water during the home-rinsing process. This type of rice is known as rinse-free, no-wash, or Musenmai (無洗米), and is gaining traction in stores and restaurants across Japan. It has even begun to spread into markets in other east Asian nations as well as the United States. As the name indicates, this rice does not require the process of rinsing. This rice not only reduces water wasted from rinsing, but also cuts water contamination and nutrient levels by approximately 65%!
You might be wondering what happens to the rice husks and extra bran that is removed in the production of this rinse-free rice. This byproduct, also known as Nuka, cannot be directly consumed. Instead, this powder-like substance which contains nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potassium, is recycled and processed into a fertilizer that is known as Komenosei. In Japan, this natural fertilizer is replacing animal and chemical fertilizers and being applied to agricultural fields, from rice paddies to vegetable farms, in order to enhance soil quality and health. Additionally, this bran is used in animal feed to boost the nutrients consumed by farm animals like cows and chickens. As a result, food produced from this fertilizer is natural and does not contain chemical additives that were previously used to supplement the nutrients needed for production.
The resulting effect is a circular food network from production to consumption, which helps reduce waste, increase productivity, and decrease contamination in the environment. While this technology has not been implemented world-wide, brands like Tamaki, Botan, and Nishiki are currently selling rinse-free rice (or musen-mai) that is produced within the United States.
So to my fellow rice eaters out there: make sure that when you buy your 5 or 10kg bag of rice, you look for the label “rinse-free”. Although it may be slightly more expensive, just remember that by spending a little extra, you are contributing to cleaner water systems, sustainable agriculture, and an overall healthier environment for everyone.