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Top Rice-Producing Countries

Can you name the countries that produce the most rice?
For the year 2021, according to FAOSTAT
Quiz by finglehorn
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Last updated: June 9, 2023
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First submittedDecember 23, 2012
Times taken76,487
Average score78.6%
Rating4.92
2:30
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Tonnes
Country
214 m
China
195 m
India
56.9 m
Bangladesh
54.4 m
Indonesia
43.9 m
Vietnam
33.6 m
Thailand
24.9 m
Myanmar
Tonnes
Country
20.0 m
Philippines
14.0 m
Pakistan
11.7 m
Brazil
11.4 m
Cambodia
10.5 m
Japan
8.70 m
United States
8.34 m
Nigeria
45 Comments
+24
Level 69
Jan 30, 2017
LOL I had them all except one with 25 seconds remaining and then thought to myself.... what if the last one isn't in Asia...what if it's somewhere like Brazil? I typed it in and started laughing... it was! Very interesting trivia there! Nice Quiz!
+7
Level 91
Jan 30, 2017
I was thinking the same thing. After typing all the Asian countries I knew, I figured, where else do people eat a lot of rice?
+4
Level 52
Jan 14, 2019
Or Africa! I got Brazil, but never considered northern Africa!!
+2
Level 61
Jul 4, 2023
I was thinking, "I bet the last one is some random African country with a severely lower guess rate." Tried Congo, South Africa, Ethiopia, Angola (?) and figured I must have missed something obvious in Indochina.
+1
Level 28
Feb 3, 2017
Got everything except Brazil. That came to a surprise to me!
+1
Level 22
Apr 24, 2017
Too many Asians living in Brazil?
+30
Level 81
Jan 12, 2019
They actually do have a very large Japanese-Brazilian community there, but also Latin American countries use a lot of rice in their cuisines. I'm kind of surprised that Mexico doesn't make the cut.
+2
Level 82
Jan 13, 2019
Ecuador, Colombia, Dominican Republic, and South Korea are other countries where people eat rice daily or at each meal but aren't on the list. I guess because they're too small.

Mexicans don't consider rice a staple like these other countries.

+13
Level 81
Jan 13, 2019
All the authentic Mexican restaurants around here serve generous portions of Mexican rice with their entrees.
+13
Level 82
Jan 15, 2019
Restaurants may serve it, but the staple is corn. Corn tortillas are at every meal in homes. I used to think rice was a staple, too, before being corrected by the with Mexicans (born and raised in Mexico) I lived with, and staying in Mexico. Rice is a filler, thus popular at restaurants. It's an occasional side dish in homes. Despite their popularity at restaurants (and trucks), tacos are also not very common as a home meal.
+2
Level 81
Dec 6, 2019
::shrug:: if you say so. Know plenty of Mexicans around here that seem to like rice but maybe not when they're at home. The home-cooked Bolivian and Salvadorian meals I had always featured it, as well.
+2
Level 82
Jul 2, 2023
Nearly all American restaurants serve french fries, but most Americans wouldn't consider them a staple. Restaurant food and home cooking where staples are generally cooked and eaten are usually quite different.
+5
Level 57
Jan 14, 2019
We eat rice every day in Brazil. Every meal must be accompanied by rice and beans. I was surprised Mexico wasn't there, though. I thought they ate a lot of rice too...
+2
Level ∞
Jun 9, 2023
Brazil is an agricultural powerhouse that is near the top of many food production indexes. I'm surprised they are not much higher here.

It helps that more total rain falls on Brazil than any other country.

+1
Level 82
Apr 17, 2018
Only missed Myanmar, but only because I thought I'd typed it already.
+2
Level 53
Dec 16, 2018
Some reason about halfway through this quiz I began thinking it was Asian only and didn't think about Brazil... Whoops.
+1
Level 75
Jan 12, 2019
1:20 left
+2
Level 47
Jan 13, 2019
Got everything but Cambodia and Philippines, so obvious :(
+2
Level 70
Dec 6, 2019
I thought Italy would be here IDK why but atleast I got Nigeria
+2
Level 72
Jul 3, 2023
Quite a bit of rice is grown in northern Italy, on the floodplains of the Po. I guess not enough to make the list, but that's the main rice producing area of the country. It used to be notorious for the horrible working conditions, especially for female workers (just Google what a "mondina" is for information)
+1
Level 61
Feb 16, 2020
Cuba should be here, their yellow rice is delightful.
+6
Level 63
Feb 21, 2020
Not a lot of room for rice fields on Cuba. At least not to harvest 8 mil tonnes.
+1
Level 17
Apr 2, 2020
i did terribly,only got 1 point!
+2
Level 72
Dec 25, 2020
Would not have guessed that Nigeria produces more rice than Japan.
+7
Level 57
Jan 19, 2021
Japan does not have much land available. Its extremely mountainous, and the flat areas are filled with people
+1
Level 70
Jan 30, 2021
Kind of crazy how a country as small and poor as Cambodia out-produces the United States, but I guess when it is a large part of your entire economy it is possible.
+5
Level 34
Apr 7, 2021
i would have never thought of nigeria :p crazy
+4
Level 81
Apr 14, 2021
The strangest thing for me in doing this quiz was seeing how much rice the world makes.

Looks like roughly 600 million tonnes, so 600 billion kilograms, with about 6.7 billion people.

So thats about 100kgs a year for every man woman and child on earth.

+2
Level 38
Apr 14, 2021
and a lot more for all the rice-filled enbies you forgot about
+2
Level 37
Jun 5, 2022
My family have 4 members and we need atleast 2 bags of rice in a month ,each bag contains 40 kg of rice.
+1
Level 60
Oct 9, 2024
bangladesh consumes like 260kg per person
+2
Level 61
Apr 14, 2021
Type every country you know in Asia then try bigger countries from different continents :D
+1
Level 61
Jul 4, 2023
I would stick to South + Southeast + East Asia... can't imagine any rice in Saudi Arabia or Cyprus.
+1
Level 42
Apr 14, 2021
Yeah after the obvious asian countries I went to Brazil just because it's huge, and it took me by surprise that is was actually right. Nigeria... Well, although it's in Africa, it has huge population and it's in pretty good hemisphere level for growing rice.
+4
Level 82
Nov 29, 2021
I just recently had it pointed out to me that rice as a staple requires far less processing to make it a dish than most other grains which must be threshed, milled or ground, and then made into a type of bread. Corn must be nixtamalized to make it a digestible nutritious staple. Rice, however, can be cooked whole or just polished then cooked and eaten. This had never occurred to me, but it's so obvious.
+2
Level 67
Sep 2, 2022
To me, as a brazilian, a meal without rice (or pasta) is only a snack.
+2
Level 71
Sep 3, 2022
Yeah. I also find it interesting that this list almost entirely overlaps with global population. If you look at one of those maps that says "over 50% of the world's population lives here," it's always a belt stretching from Pakistan in the west to Indonesia in the south/east and Japan in the north. I've always attributed this to agriculture, but there are other areas with similarly good agriculture. I wonder if it's the simplicity of rice as a crop specifically that allows rice-based societies to flourish. You essentially get more product for less labor and land, and thus you can support larger populations in smaller areas.
+2
Level 60
Jul 2, 2023
I thought for the last one, "probably somewhere in Africa". But never actually tried anything and just gave up instead. Whoops.
+1
Level 46
Jul 2, 2023
Figured Nigeria out because there's alot of Nigerians in my area and they love rice,wasn't expecting USA though,I can't imagine rice field over there in America.
+1
Level 68
Jul 2, 2023
Looks like the south, and California (most-to-least: Arkansas >> CA > LA >> MO)
+1
Level 82
Jul 2, 2023
Since the southern US produced cotton on the land that has been repurposed to grow rice, it has a lot of arsenic left in the soil that the rice absorbs. Carolina rice is quite well-known and a lot of creole and cajun dishes from Louisiana center on rice. Enslaved people from Africa brought rice growing and cooking techniques and knowledge to the Americas.
+1
Level 68
Jul 2, 2023
I assumed the Philippines might not have enough area to devote to rice farming.

I wonder why Russia, Mongolia, DPRK/ROK, and the central -stans, don't make the list? Lack of population? Preference for wheat, or maybe it/others are more profitable to export?

Looks like Pakistan relies on wheat. Also sugarcane.

"Pakistan's largest food crop is wheat. As of 2018, According to ministry of agriculture,,, Pakistan wheat output reached 26.3 million tonnes.[10] In 2005, Pakistan produced 21,591,400 metric tons of wheat, more than all of Africa (20,304,585 metric tons) and nearly as much as all of South America (24,557,784 metric tons), according to the FAO.[11] The country had harvested more than 25 to 23 million tons of wheat in 2012."

+2
Level 82
Jul 2, 2023
The Koreas are small, and we also import a lot of rice these days. Most rice farmers are old and young Korean in the south don't want to be farmers.

Russia and Mongolia aren't big rice eaters and their lands are dry or too cold for too long in the year. Central Asia is wheat country. Also small land and population and many are mountainous.

+1
Level 61
Jul 4, 2023
My thinking was the majority of farmers in Russia, Mongolia, and the central -stans don't have enough water for rice.
+1
Level 63
Feb 15, 2024
I miss Nigeria