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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
::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.
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.
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...
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
Mexicans don't consider rice a staple like these other countries.
It helps that more total rain falls on Brazil than any other country.
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.
or Cyprus.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."
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.