|
The area of rice plantations in the world is more than 150 million hectors.
The global production of rice is 500 million tones, representing 21% of the world’s food.
The number of rice consumers exceeds 3 billion persons, of whom 90% are in Asia. The number of rice producing countries is 42, and most of them do not have excess to export as it is consumed locally.
China and India produce half of the world production of rice, but they export only very small portion of their output (less than 1% of their output).
The largest rice exporter is Thailand followed by India; Vietnam & U.S.A. Thailand exports about 5 million tons annually, the world largest volume of exports, because the output in most of the countries is consumed locally. The quantities of exports from all countries are estimated at 25 million tons i.e.5%of the world production.
The international bank for rice owns 90 thousands rice sample (hybrid) for researches:
There are 140 thousand type of rice in the world and the Int. bank for rice strains owns 90 thousands types (used only for researches and studies). However, the famous types, which are cultivated in most of the countries, are 19 types only.
The U.S. citizen consumes 12kgm of rice annually; the European consumes 3klg only whereas the citizens in Indonesia, Thailand China, Vietnam and Bangladesh consume 17 times the consumption of the U.S. citizen, as the average rate of consumption, in those countries stands at 200 kg per annum.
When a merchant purchases rice from the farmers, he stores it in dry stores at a relatively high temperature for drying it and demoisturing it. Then it is exported. The storing period ranges between many months to one year or more in order to improve its flavor and solidity. The moister percentage at the time of selling declines to %14 of the grain’s weight.
There are some nations, which consider rice same as bread as it enters in all the meals, and those people do not know the bread or the other grains. Most of the population in Asia takes rice 2 to 3 times at least per day.
|
