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Time of India
3 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
‘Once, access to nature was segregated by race- now, green ‘techno-fixes' seek profits'
Rob Nixon is Professor of English at Princeton University. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke before World Nature Conservation Day (28 July), he discusses changing ecological views: We are seeing a world where climate science is now being denied and 'Drill, baby, drill' are acceptable words — has your concept of 'slow violence' against ecology become faster? The pace of change is accelerating. In America, there is certainly the defunding of environmental agencies and the denial of climate science — yet, it is harder now to deny this than it was earlier and the forces trying to do so are a little less sure and vocal. However, we now have the phenomenon of a clutch of billionaires emerging from places like Silicon Valley with an idea of the 'techno-fix' — this includes huge plans like solar geoengineering, diverse grand megaprojects of reorganising the environment technologically. In my view, these are almost surrogate ways of climate denial. These people accept climate science but the only solutions they offer are techno-determinism, driven by profit and hostile to regulations. These projects don't ever focus on reducing emissions — the approach assumes the only solution will be technological as opposed to new forms of governance, civic action, etc. Money can be earned from these initiatives — these groups thus are not climate denialists but once you start discussing neoliberal politics, the need for regulation and redistribution of opportunity, they oppose those. So, the techno-utopians are, in a sense, playing for Team Climate Denial as they are not interested in reducing emissions or ensuring environmental justice . You write of the 'environmentalism of the poor' — can you describe that? This is an effort to emphasise the poor, both urban and rural, have environmental values and make ecological choices. As ecosystems get degraded, the poor are most vulnerable to making difficult choices between protecting the environment and surviving threatened circumstances. For a long time, it was assumed the automatic spokesperson for nature would be a white person from the Global North — today, there is a bigger chorus of voices, including people who have direct environmental experience. This helps reconcile issues like food and water security with conservation in a very different way from having only the voices of people in Washington, Geneva or London. Their decisions don't take into account the fact of sharing land with other creatures. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Knee Pain After 50? Try This Before Reaching for Pills Read More Undo You write of South Africa as well — was access to nature itself divided on a racial basis during the apartheid era? Yes. In terms of the whole edifice of conservation, particularly in southern and eastern Africa where the largest populations of white colonialists lived, there was 'fortress conservation' or the protection of animals at the expense of locals. There was racial segregation and exclusion in terms of black access to natural spaces — for many black Africans, it seemed like white conservationists liked animals more than them. A big shift taking place now — there is much more respect for rural Africans as possessing environmental knowledge. There is growing recognition of how they have lived for centuries with the land and ecosystems and developed reservoirs of knowledge which old-style colonial conservation never respected, nor engaged with. The idea was conservation did not come 'naturally' to the colonised. Fortunately, there has been a change in that now. Yet, the long history was extremely segregationist and discriminatory — if a white person killed animals, they were a 'hunter', but if a black person did the same, they were a 'poacher'. An identical activity was given different designations according to the race of the person carrying the weapon. Did colonial control also impact nonhuman species in South Africa? The big driver for tourism — and thus, for conservation, which attempted to make wildlife into a touristic money-spinner — in southern and eastern Africa, which includes South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, was charismatic megafauna. So, most conservation focus was on elephants, lions, buffalos, leopards, rhinos, etc. At times, to present an experience with these species for eager American and European visitors, the animals were transported to places they couldn't adjust to or survive in. I grew up in an area which didn't have much savanna. Hence, no giraffes existed there naturally — but tourists wanted giraffes as part of their smorgasbord of creatures. So, the authorities would bring giraffes in and they would not stay well. Now, there is greater attention to habitat conservation and ecosystem preservation in a far more holistic way while not wanting to lose the revenue that comes from megafauna. Also, there are more — but not enough — game parks owned and run by black South Africans. Hopefully, that will grow and present a counter-hegemonic view of what conservation means to indigenous people. These sites can help by discussing ways for conservation that didn't only spring from the heads of colonialists but instead emerged from people's real experiences of living with animals on the land. Views expressed are personal
Time of India
20-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
‘Palm oil prevails from soap to napalm — it feeds billions but pollutes Earth'
Jonathan E. Robins Jonathan E. Robins is Associate Professor of History at Michigan Tech University. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke , he discusses the story — and challenges — of palm oil: What is the history of palm oil? ■ This product had been used for thousands of years in Africa. But the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade in the 16th and 17th centuries brought people, food and products outside Africa. Palm oil was used to feed enslaved captives on slave ships. It was also used as a cosmetic — before they were auctioned off in America, it was applied to make the skin of enslaved people look shiny and healthier. It also played a role in the colonial scramble for Africa — palm oil was an important motivation for European empires to seize territory, trying, for instance, in Nigeria and Cameroon to secure and monopolise access to oilproducing regions. Later, it reached Southeast Asia — in the 19th century, the British began to expand their control over the Indian Ocean area. They transferred oil palm seeds and other plants they thought were economically useful across the region. The Dutch were also involved — a consignment of oil palm reached then-Dutch East Indies in 1848, taking root there. Who were the workers growing this crop? Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Redefine Your Future with a Top Online MBA SRM Online Enquire Now Undo by Taboola by Taboola ■ Initially, in Southeast Asia, there was little local interest in palm oil because coconut was a well-established industry. In the 20 th century, when prices for all commodities, but particularly edible oils, began to skyrocket around WWI , high prices for oil drew Europebased companies to invest in oil palm plantations in the region. They copied the established business model for rubber, where colonial governments took land from local people and leased it to European companies — they then imported workers from India, Java or China, often under indenture contracts. The wages these plantations paid were simply not high enough to attract locals — they thus relied on recruiting labour from places with fewer opportunities, limited access to land, overpopulation and often, famine conditions which compelled people to seek overseas work, even at low wages. How did palm oil then get involved in post WWII development plans? ■ In the 1950s-60s, the World Bank and former colonial powers, like the British and French, began looking for projects that could create jobs in ex-colonies and increase supplies to address what many believed was an impending global food crisis. Being a labour-intensive crop, the palm oil industry provided a lot of employment while creating a material useful for food and other products. Eventually, that became part of the development narrative of post-colonial economies like Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, etc. Instead of rejecting colonial crops, independent governments embraced them as a source of revenue that could be channelled into other development projects. What is the history of palm oil, fats and 'an industrial diet'? ■ This story begins in the 19th century when a series of discoveries in chemistry revealed new ways of manipulating natural fats from plant and animalbased oils. Manufacturers were seeking to reduce costs — one way was by making raw materials interchangeable. So, they used chemistry to modify fats from different plant and animal sources. The cheapest products using palm oil first were candles and soap — it then found itself in food. In the late 19 th century, new products, like margarine, cooking and frying fats, began to be developed. They were simply sold as new 'industrial' fats — one week, they might be made with hydrogenated cottonseed oil, another week, with palm oil. For manufacturers, these fats being substituted so easily was very appealing. Palm oil became such a significant part of this system because the plant is an extremely efficient producer of fats and has both unsaturated liquid components and saturated fats, which makes it applicable across industries. Can you tell us about its presence in modern soap? ■ West Africans made soap using palm oil centuries ago — in the 18th century, European travellers there described such locally-made soaps. Europeans began using it first as a colouring agent. Raw, unrefined palm oil has a striking red or orange colour — when fresh, it also has a very interesting scent. This combination made palm oil an attractive ingredient for early soap manufacturers. In the 19 th century, as Britain moved to abolish the slave trade, British merchants and shipping companies began exporting more and more palm oil to make up for that commercial loss. Its price fell and as it became cheaper, soap makers began to use it as their main ingredient. How did it make its way into weaponry? ■ The main connection is through a product that all fats contain called glycerine — for years, this had been discarded as a waste product but then, chemists discovered it could be used to make, among other things, explosives. Nitroglycerin was the first major explosive based on this. A series of other applications derive from this use of palm oil — napalm was initially developed using palmitic acids drawn from it, a thickened sort of gasoline product that burns. Later manufacturing shifted to other materials — yet, palm oil was important enough to give this weapon its name 'napalm'. What are palm oil's environmental impacts? ■ The Southeast Asian industry in particular grew at the expense of destroying primary forest which was first targeted by colonial plantations. This continued post-independence. Deforestation is also of great concern in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. But other impacts include water pollution — factories extracting palm oil use enormous amounts of water. Until the 1980s, most byproducts of this process were just dumped into local waterways, causing pollution. This is still a problem in many 'frontier' areas where oil palm is a newly developed industry. The mills started there often don't have the equipment and infrastructure to safely process waste — hence, deforestation combined with water pollution produces very negative impacts. PROFUSE, YET UNSEEN: Palm oil is widely used Palm oil employs millions though — are there sustainable ways forward? ■ It's a challenge because palm oil is often invisible in the products we consume — rarely can we see its colour or taste its flavour. Those components have been intentionally removed from most palm oil added to consumer products. I'd suggest people think about palm oil with curiosity and concern. It is a very important food product, it sustains billions and converting it now, for instance, into biofuel is a concern for some who worry that the rush to embrace biodiesel and 'green fuels' will not only accelerate deforestation but also increase food prices. These issues are one reason I use a commodity approach in my research — this allows us to grasp onto physical objects that connect us to different regions, organisations, governments, corporations and real people who produce and consume these things. Commodities help us avoid abstractions — they ground our understanding of global challenges, environmental to economic, in a way where we can see their origins in history and hopefully use that to address our own world.
Time of India
13-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
India and China were the world's richest nations — rice grew their wealth: Francesca Bray, University of Edinburgh
Francesca Bray is Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke , she outlines the history of rice — and its workers: What is the core of your research? Over my career, I've looked at multiple aspects stemming from my original research, which was on the history of agriculture in China . From that came an interest in agrarian networks and social systems linked with these. Gender, with its associated crops, was one such topic — this is when I grew particularly interested in rice. Does rice represent global commodity networks? Rice is rather special in today's world — wheat and corn are global commodities, bought and sold between countries in greater quantities than usually consumed in their home economies. Rice is an exception — although it has world markets, most rice produced is actually consumed within the societies that grow it. Rice has resisted the large-scale industrial monoculture model and rice fields are still smaller than wheat, soybean or industrial maize. Rice encourages smaller farmers and more diversity of crops and occupations. IT'S AT SO MANY LEVELS: Rice, grown in a variety of ways by small farmers, from flat paddies to layered terraces, evolved its own technological development and sparked entrepreneurship — Live Events Did rice cultivation shape pre-colonial societies? With the ability of its farms to remain small, rice did away with feudal relations — the management of farms by small agriculturalists meant their labour was not directly controlled by a landlord. As long as they paid their rent, they were fine. Secondly, it encouraged small farmers to become entrepreneurs, working at household scale or with local manufacturers and often buying land of their own. In southern China, the notion of wealth growing within generations was strong because people could change their status. In Malaysia, peasants contributed taxes to a king's coffers but they weren't feudal labour — they were independent farmers. How do you view the characterisation of ricebased economies being slower and less technological than wheat-eating nations? The historian Roy Bin Wong's book 'China Transformed' suggests the principle of symmetrical comparison — instead of saying 'Europe went this way and China and India didn't, so what did they do wrong?', we should ask what people wanted there and whether they were successful at managing it. The south Chinese rice-centred economy actually grew enormously over the centuries, becoming a global powerhouse. It didn't give rise to an Industrial Revolution like England's and mechanisation wasn't big but many systems for raising capital, making it available at a distance, etc., developed there. The 19 th century onwards, interactions in the Indian Ocean-Pacific world between Western capitalism and what was supposed to not be capitalism in Asia had several financial systems which came from South India, East Asia and Islamic nations. WERE YOU ALWAYS PEARLY? Rice includes harsh realities like colonialism and forced labour India and China were actually the richest economies on Earth — rice was a significant factor in this wealth and the social organisation of businesses around it helped produce capitalism. So, it's not helpful to say, 'They were slow and got overtaken', because if you look in detail at the interactions, there was mutual influence — of course, since the people writing such books were English or Dutch, they preferred to say they were the ones bringing progress. How did colonialism then impact rice? Rice was an essential product in the rise and expansion of colonialism and the emergence of a global industrial economy — during the colonial era, rice became a cheap staple food for poor workforces around the world. By 1700, rice was the main provision of the slave trade between West Africa and the Americas — it then became the staple of colonial labour across the tropical zone. In the 18 th century, rice plantations in Brazil and South Carolina harnessed African skills to grow the crop for export to Europe and the Caribbean. Through the 19 th century, as they expanded colonies in Asia, British, French and Dutch powers carved out export-based rice zones in Indochina and Indonesia — they also priced the rice industries of America out of the market. Independent kingdoms in Southeast Asia like Siam (Thailand) also entered the fray and opened new rice frontiers to feed miners, plantation workers and growing urban populations. A latecomer colonial power, Meiji Japan , met its expanding resource needs by annexing Taiwan and Korea and taking control of their rice production. Chinese merchants controlled most of the rice trade across Southeast Asia. FROM STAPLE TO SPECIAL: Rice is many- splendoured The area under rice increased as colonial workforces expanded — by the mid-19 th century, new technologies for draining, pumping and levelling meant swampy deltas and flood plains could now be turned into paddy fields. In Indochina, rice industries were set up to feed migrant workers in mines and plantations — in Punjab and Bengal, the British intensified rice systems developed by the Mughals to expand commercial cropping of indigo, cotton and sugarcane. Colonial policies drove the emergence of what the historian Peter Boomgaard calls 'monotonous rice bowls', monocrop zones depending on intensive labour by workers who had little opportunity to diversify or increase their incomes. Typically, they were tied down by debt — colonial governments introduced taxes that had to be paid in cash while moneylenders charged high rates of interest. It was in this fertile soil that the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s was planted. What role has gender played in rice? IT'S NOT JUST HIS-STORY: The chronicles of women rice farmers are often wilfully erased Even between China and Japan, which were very close in many respects, the gender coding of rice cultivation was different. China was a particularly intense example of a gender coding where men were supposed to be in the fields growing grain and women in the house, weaving cloth. This view dated back to the early imperial period in China and outlived the eventual switch to monetary payment. The notion that men should be out in the fields and women at home remained fundamental in Chinese political economy and concepts of identity, gender and morality. It seemed to fit with Chinese circumstances since many rice regions in China were textile producers, which did start with women producing the textiles. As the economy commercialised though, more and more men came into the textile industry which began to expand to workshops outside the home. Meanwhile, in many regions, women were out working in the rice fields — but since this wasn't regarded as 'proper' or 'ideal' women's activity, their hard work was often erased from the history books.
Time of India
13-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
‘India and China were the world's richest nations — rice grew their wealth'
'India and China were the world's richest nations — rice grew their wealth' Francesca Bray is Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke , she outlines the history of rice — and its workers: What is the core of your research? Over my career, I've looked at multiple aspects stemming from my original research, which was on the history of agriculture in China. From that came an interest in agrarian networks and social systems linked with these. Gender, with its associated crops, was one such topic — this is when I grew particularly interested in rice. Does rice represent global commodity networks? by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Secure your family's future! ICICI Pru Life Insurance Plan Get Quote Undo Rice is rather special in today's world — wheat and corn are global commodities, bought and sold between countries in greater quantities than usually consumed in their home economies. Rice is an exception — although it has world markets, most rice produced is actually consumed within the societies that grow it. Rice has resisted the large-scale industrial monoculture model and rice fields are still smaller than wheat, soybean or industrial maize. Rice encourages smaller farmers and more diversity of crops and occupations. IT'S AT SO MANY LEVELS: Rice, grown in a variety of ways by small farmers, from flat paddies to layered terraces, evolved its own technological development and sparked entrepreneurship — Did rice cultivation shape pre-colonial societies? With the ability of its farms to remain small, rice did away with feudal relations — the management of farms by small agriculturalists meant their labour was not directly controlled by a landlord. As long as they paid their rent, they were fine. Secondly, it encouraged small farmers to become entrepreneurs, working at household scale or with local manufacturers and often buying land of their own. In southern China, the notion of wealth growing within generations was strong because people could change their status. In Malaysia, peasants contributed taxes to a king's coffers but they weren't feudal labour — they were independent farmers. How do you view the characterisation of ricebased economies being slower and less technological than wheat-eating nations? The historian Roy Bin Wong's book 'China Transformed' suggests the principle of symmetrical comparison — instead of saying 'Europe went this way and China and India didn't, so what did they do wrong?', we should ask what people wanted there and whether they were successful at managing it. The south Chinese rice-centred economy actually grew enormously over the centuries, becoming a global powerhouse. It didn't give rise to an Industrial Revolution like England's and mechanisation wasn't big but many systems for raising capital, making it available at a distance, etc., developed there. The 19 th century onwards, interactions in the Indian Ocean-Pacific world between Western capitalism and what was supposed to not be capitalism in Asia had several financial systems which came from South India, East Asia and Islamic nations. WERE YOU ALWAYS PEARLY? Rice includes harsh realities like colonialism and forced labour India and China were actually the richest economies on Earth — rice was a significant factor in this wealth and the social organisation of businesses around it helped produce capitalism. So, it's not helpful to say, 'They were slow and got overtaken', because if you look in detail at the interactions, there was mutual influence — of course, since the people writing such books were English or Dutch, they preferred to say they were the ones bringing progress. How did colonialism then impact rice? Rice was an essential product in the rise and expansion of colonialism and the emergence of a global industrial economy — during the colonial era, rice became a cheap staple food for poor workforces around the world. By 1700, rice was the main provision of the slave trade between West Africa and the Americas — it then became the staple of colonial labour across the tropical zone. In the 18 th century, rice plantations in Brazil and South Carolina harnessed African skills to grow the crop for export to Europe and the Caribbean. Through the 19 th century, as they expanded colonies in Asia, British, French and Dutch powers carved out export-based rice zones in Indochina and Indonesia — they also priced the rice industries of America out of the market. Times evoke Independent kingdoms in Southeast Asia like Siam (Thailand) also entered the fray and opened new rice frontiers to feed miners, plantation workers and growing urban populations. A latecomer colonial power, Meiji Japan , met its expanding resource needs by annexing Taiwan and Korea and taking control of their rice production. Chinese merchants controlled most of the rice trade across Southeast Asia. FROM STAPLE TO SPECIAL: Rice is many- splendoured The area under rice increased as colonial workforces expanded — by the mid-19 th century, new technologies for draining, pumping and levelling meant swampy deltas and flood plains could now be turned into paddy fields. In Indochina, rice industries were set up to feed migrant workers in mines and plantations — in Punjab and Bengal, the British intensified rice systems developed by the Mughals to expand commercial cropping of indigo, cotton and sugarcane. Colonial policies drove the emergence of what the historian Peter Boomgaard calls 'monotonous rice bowls', monocrop zones depending on intensive labour by workers who had little opportunity to diversify or increase their incomes. Typically, they were tied down by debt — colonial governments introduced taxes that had to be paid in cash while moneylenders charged high rates of interest. It was in this fertile soil that the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s was planted. What role has gender played in rice? IT'S NOT JUST HIS-STORY: The chronicles of women rice farmers are often wilfully erased Even between China and Japan, which were very close in many respects, the gender coding of rice cultivation was different. China was a particularly intense example of a gender coding where men were supposed to be in the fields growing grain and women in the house, weaving cloth. This view dated back to the early imperial period in China and outlived the eventual switch to monetary payment. The notion that men should be out in the fields and women at home remained fundamental in Chinese political economy and concepts of identity, gender and morality. It seemed to fit with Chinese circumstances since many rice regions in China were textile producers, which did start with women producing the textiles. As the economy commercialised though, more and more men came into the textile industry which began to expand to workshops outside the home. Meanwhile, in many regions, women were out working in the rice fields — but since this wasn't regarded as 'proper' or 'ideal' women's activity, their hard work was often erased from the history books.
Time of India
06-07-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Southeast Asia: ‘Rice was grown 10,000 years ago — it first linked India and Southeast Asia'
Dorian Q. Fuller is Professor of Archaeobotany at University College London. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke, he discusses rice's roots: What is the core of your research? I am both an archaeologist and a botanist. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now I collaborate on archaeological excavation projects where we recover preserved plant remains, consisting of the remnants of crops, weeds and wild, gathered foods as well as the wood fuel people used for cooking and fires. From that, we study which crops existed in past cultures and different places and how agriculture, plants and the human diet have changed. Where was the earliest evidence of cultivated rice found? First, I should specify there are two distinct species of rice. There's an African rice, cultivated traditionally in parts of West Africa which has a separate origin, and there's Asian rice, grown in India, China, Japan, etc. Within Asian cultivated rice, there are two subspecies — Indica and Japonica, the former more dominant in South Asia, the latter in East Asia. In terms of the earliest evidence for cultivation, that seems related to the Japonica subspecies or its ancestors in China — this comes from parts of the Yangtze River Basin , the Middle Yangtze, like Hunan province, the lower Yangtze around Zhejiang and tributaries to the north, like the Huaihe river. There's a good case to be made for multiple independent starts of cultivation in China going back 10,000 years. Quite separately, you have an early use of wild rice in parts of northern India, especially in the Ganges River Basin, stretching into the Upper Ganges-Yamuna areas. When that was cultivated and domesticated is much debated — I'd say there is evidence for early cultivation in India 5,000 years ago and possibly even 9,000 years ago. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Importantly, genetic evidence today shows there was ancient hybridisation between East Asian Japonicas and the ancestors of Indica. Introduced rices from East Asia mixed with local varieties in India and produced something new — Indica rice as known today. That explains our picture from modern genomes and archaeological evidence. I think the hybridisation occurred around 4,000 years ago, with an introduced variety that came to India via trade from East Asia. Did rice cultivation change landscapes? Yes — rice is unique among cereals in that it's a wetland species. It likes a lot of water, in contrast to wheat, barley or millets, all semi-arid dryland species. As rice needs water, its initial cultivation, whether in the Yangtze or Ganges Valley, was in naturally flooded areas. As rice agriculture spread upland and southwards through the Deccan in India, it reached dry areas requiring irrigation. People then created bunded paddy fields that trapped rainwater — they started making artificial wetlands. That was transformative of the landscape. Did this also change social structures? Creating artificial wetlands and irrigation systems demands a lot of labour, alongside irrigated rice is highly productive and feeds many more people. As rice cultivation expanded in India and Southeast Asia , it encouraged population growth and density, early urbanisation and the rise of social hierarchy — the control of land, rice and labour to build irrigation works fed into more hierarchical societies. Did rice also impact animal life? Artificial wetlands are a challenge to plough — the water buffalo became suitable. They are native to India, where their domestication happened in the Harappan world independent of rice. As its cultivation grew, its use increased. Paddy fields also attract wetland small fauna and fish like carp. Some became sources of protein in traditional Southeast Asian systems and a comanagement of various kinds of fish in rice paddies developed. Did rice entail interactions across these ancient societies? Yes. With the establishment of rice-based agricultural systems and early urbanisation in north India and the Ganges plains in the Iron Age around 3,000 years ago, craft specialisation started. Fine ceramics, stonework, beads, metallurgy, etc., began — these got traded over long distances. Our earliest evidence for contact between India and Southeast Asia is from then — you see the arrival of Indian-made ceramics, beads, etc., in Southeast Asia, alongside other Indian crops like mung and toor lentils turning up in sites in southern Thailand. Later, ideas of Buddhism and Hinduism spread in Southeast Asia but the first interaction was about craft and agriculture, supported by rice. What are some of the most fascinating archaeobotanical rice relics you've seen? I've worked on the Tianluoshan site in China, discovered in 2004. It was one of the first places where we could recover the spikelet base of rice, a very small structure that attaches the grain to the plant — it undergoes a key morphological change as a result of domestication, where the plant loses the ability to disperse itself by shattering and now requires planting and harvesting by humans. In this archaeological material, we could see the actual gradual change of the population away from the wild, shattering type towards the domesticated type. In 2006, I also visited the Lahuradeva site managed by the Uttar Pradesh State Department of Archaeology . It shows how people there were consuming rice 6,000 years ago, the debate being over how domesticated or wild that food was. What are the implications of climate change for rice — and vice versa? There are arguments that rice contributes to climate change because its wetland environments produce methane — that's not from rice itself but the methanogenic microorganisms in the wetland waters. Of course, most global warming is from fossil fuel use. But there is research now on ways to grow rice that reduce methane output while ensuring productivity. Meanwhile, climate change is altering rainfall distribution in time and space — that is challenging for ricegrowing because it may increase water shortages and drought. Hence, more drought-tolerant species, like millets, are another direction for research. How different is the rice we eat today, compared to ancient varieties? There are continuities and changes. Interestingly, wild rice populations had red grains — now, that's relatively rare compared to white or brown rice today. Earlier, people selected varieties partly for aesthetics and because it was thought white rice cooks faster and tastes different. People also selected for fragrance, from basmati to jasmine. There is no evidence that any of the wild rices were fragrant, though, so that's a mutation. There's been selection for stickiness in Southeast Asia with glutinous rices, which also didn't exist in wild varieties. So, in its long cultural history, humans have changed rice, from a more standard wild form to very different kinds across diverse cultures.
