Abstract
IF all the rice grown in India were planted in the British Isles, there would not be standing room for it. Yet the area under rice in India, with the exception of Bengal, is practically confined to a coastal fringe and is far from supplying the requirements of the people. The per capita ration for a rice-eating population would probably fall something short of three pounds a “day, and the consumption in India is more like one pound. The staple food in a great tract in the north is wheat (there are 50,000 square miles of wheat in India), while the main cereal food of the population in the remainder consists of various millets. In other words, the ninety million acres under rice in India fall far short of the requirements of the country, and to a large proportion of the population rice is an almost unobtainable luxury. At the conclusion of the Armistice, festive gatherings were held in all parts of India, and at one in which the writer took part, representatives of all the neighbouring tribes were given a substantial meal. It transpired that some of these had never tasted rice, and, the quantity not being stinted, the unique spectacle was witnessed of the emaciated human frame swelling visibly during one short afternoon into comfortable rotundity.
Rice.
By Prof. E. B. Copeland. Pp. xiv + 352 + 18 plates. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1924.) 20s. net.
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B., C. Rice. Nature 114, 455–458 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/114455a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/114455a0
