life in village

life in village

What is it?

People were thought to be growing it around 5000 years ago. It needs a lot of water to grow. In many countries it is the main or staple food. In Asia about 25 million small farms grow it. 5,000 liters of water are needed to produce 1 kg of it. There are more than 140,000 varieties of it. It is good for you as it is a good source of thiamin, iron, phosphorus, potassium and folic acid. Indonesians love it, averaging more than 200 kg per head each year compared to the average European who eats 5 kg. Hundreds of millions of the poor spend half to three fourths of their incomes on it. Malaysia is ready to import it from Indonesia if the Indonesian government decides to export the staple. There are an average of 36,590 grains of it in a kilogram and 1,829,500 grains in a 50 kg bag. And did you know that it was first grown commercially in Australia in the Murrumbidgee area of New South Wales in 1924.

Every part of the rice plant is used! The straw (jerami) is used as fuel, as bedding for animals, can be made into rope, handicrafts, shoes, toys, paper and even bricks. The grain (bulir) is cooked and eaten every day. It is also made into crackers, cereals, flour, milk, processed into feed for animals, cosmetics and fermented into wine, beer and vinegar. The bran (dedak) is boiled for oil to make soap and cosmetics and added to foods for fibre and nutrition. It is also fed to chickens. The hulls (kulit gabah) are used as packing material to protect delicate cargo, packed around ice as insulation and burned in simple stoves. Ash (abu) from the hulls is sometimes used to clean teeth, and turned into cellulose products such as rayon and rice fuel.

Everyone eats bubur when they are sick but did you know it is used for other illnesses too? Drinking the water of boiled rice is often used to treat patient with diarrhea. Cooled boiled rice is mashed into a paste and applied to swellings and skin blemishes. And did you know RICE stands for Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation – the best method to recover from most sports injuries. What would we do without RICE?