Sculpture of Rice Making, Datong, China

A sculpture to making rice is a bit surprising until you think about it.

Rice is the most important human food crop in the world, directly feeding more people than any other crop. Nearly half of world’s population – more than 3 billion people – rely on rice every day.  Rice has also fed more people over a longer time than has any other crop. It is spectacularly diverse, both in the way it is grown and how it is used by humans. Rice is unique because it can grow in wet environments that other crops cannot survive in. Such wet environments are abundant across Asia. The domestication of rice ranks as one of the most important developments in history and now thousands of rice varieties are cultivated on every continent except Antarctica.

When and where the domestication of rice took place is not specifically known, but new archaeological evidence points to an area along the Yangtze River in central China. Researched by a team of Japanese and Chinese archaeologists unanimously indicate a median age of over 11,000 years. Another discovery of possibly the oldest settlement found in China, which is located closely upstream from the other sites, gives credence to the new findings.

Rice can be boiled or steamed, or else first ground into flour and made into noodles, breads, cakes, and other products. Besides the standard domestic cooking methods summarized here, rice can also be processed into other rice-based food and drink products.