I didn't realise until recently that Australia's rice production was internationally significant. Normally:
Annual world production totals 600 million tonnes with only 25 million tonnes traded outside the country of origin. While Australian rice represents only around 0.2% of world rice production, remarkably Australia exports represent over 4 % of world trade.That's about a million tonnes of rice. But we won't be exporting a grain this year:
A few dozen growers - most using water pumped from underground - will harvest just 18,000 tonnes for domestic consumption, it is forecast.But one thing that puzzles me about this is the question of where we grow rice in this country:
Rice is grown on some 145,000 ha of land, mainly in the irrigated areas of south-eastern Australia. Eighty per cent of rice produced in Australia is of medium-grain Japonica varieties, which are well suited to high summer temperatures without the humidity of tropical climates.Huh? Haven't we routinely got water to excess in the Ord River dam in WA, as well as in many North Queensland dams? Isn't rice generally well suited to the tropics?
Here's my brilliant Australia 2020 suggestion: let's try growing rice where the water is! (Thank you, thank you, it was nothing really.)
3 comments:
Hi Steve
I normaly go out of my way (and over budget)to buy australian groceries, with the exeption of rice, given the climate of australia ,it is dopey in the extreme to grow this water hogging crop in the driest continent on earth and in a dry area of this continent (neranderra,leeton)
Wouldn't it be better to grow it in asia in a tropical area more suited to a water intensive crop and have an added benefit of giving work to and helping some of our asian neighbors
Peter
Peter, to be fair, the Australian ricegrowers claim to use only about half the water the rest of the world uses on average to make a tonne of rice. You still have to "pond" it for at least some time, though, it seems. The information is all at the Australian Ricegrowers Association of Australia, which is very keen to talk up their environmental credentials:
http://tinyurl.com/5pa5lu
As for why it isn't grown in the tropical north much, I assume it's mainly to do with transport costs, of the relatively remote location. But I have a vague memory of the Ord River scheme, when it first started, as claiming to be ideal for rice growing. Maybe with world food prices going up, it will become viable to build a mill there? And can't you fit a food ship in between all the iron ore ones?
Much to my surprise there was an article in the New York Times only a few days ago, devoted entirely to the growing of rice in Oz, and how it has plummeted by 80% in recent years.
The way the NYTs article read, you would have thought that the price and shortage of rice in the world was all down to our plucky little farmers and their drought ridden plight.
Now I see that our contribution to rice in the world is tee wee.
Go figure.
I don't mind if we grow rice here, but only if it makes sense when looked at from all economic and sustainability aspects, and I suspect it just doesn't add up.
In the NYTs article, they specifically wrote about a town in which the heart - the rice mill - has long stopped beating. Not worth running anymore. If that's the case, we shouldn't be building any new ones Steve.
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