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(1) Tim Carman, Rice Grown in Maryland? Farmer Sees a Future That Doesn’t Involve Flooding. Washington Post, Dec 17, 2013
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle ... 1116fd98_story.html
Quote:
"breaking with a tradition that dates to colonial America. They’re rejecting paddy rice in favor of an increasingly accepted agricultural system that promises to increase crop yields while decreasing water use
"It’s not clear when a farmer last grew rice in the Chesapeake region for commercial sale, export or personal use. * * *Even so, Rockville-based culinary historian Michael Twitty says that rice probably was grown in Maryland as late as the 1880s, mostly for home consumption or trade with neighbors.
"In 1880, the US Department of the Interior released its Report on the Productions of Agriculture, which noted that 'the single state of South Carolina produces nearly one-half' of the rice grown in the United States (more than 52 million pounds out of a total production of 110 million pounds)
"For the most part, rice in the United States is grown in flooded fields or the boggy lands near rivers or other bodies of water, after practices that date back millennia to rice farming in China and Southeast Asia. The floodwaters serve a purpose: They control weeds that otherwise would compete with the rice plants, which have a unique ability to survive the oxygen-less environment of a paddy field. But as water becomes a precious resource and as consumers fret over arsenic levels in rice (which are higher in plants grown in paddies), some advocates have been promoting an alternative method: It’s called system of rice intensification, or SRI. * * * Since its introduction in the 1980s in Madagascar, SRI has been adopted by farmers in more than 50 countries. * * *Despite its acceptance overseas and its high-profile endorsements, SRI has barely made an impression on US rice growers
Note:
(a) Charles County, Maryland
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_County,_Maryland
(named for Charles Calvert (1637–1715[; 2nd Proprietor of Maryland, who inherited the colony in 1675 upon the death of his father, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimor]), third Baron Baltimore)
is about 15 miles south of Washington DC.
* The English surname Calvert is "from Middle English calfhirde, from Old English (Anglian) calf ‘calf’ + hierde ‘herdsman.'"
(b) "As he [farmer Heinz Thomet] began experimenting with rice, Thomet tried a few different seeds, including a jasmine variety and the famous Carolina Gold, which was resurrected in South Carolina in the 1980s after being all but left for dead. Yet it was a Japanese variety, Koshihikari, that responded best to the particular soil, climate and agricultural practices at Next Step. This fall, Thomet harvested more than 400 pounds and started selling the short-grain brown rice for $12 a pound at the FreshFarm Market at Dupont Circle."
(i) jasmine rice
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasmine_rice
(sometimes known as Thai fragrant rice; is a long-grain variety of rice; originally from Thailand; was named as Kao Horm Mali 105 variety (KDML105) by Sunthorn Seehanern, an official of the Ministry of Agriculture in the Chachoengsao Province of Thailand in 1954)
(ii) History of South Carolina
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Carolina
(section 2.6 Rice: "Planters earned wealth from two major crops: rice and indigo, both of which relied on cultivation by slave labor.[13] Historians no longer believe that the blacks brought the art of rice cultivation from Africa.[10] Exports of these crops led South Carolina to become one of the wealthiest colonies prior to the Revolution. Near the beginning of the 18th century, planters began rice culture along the coast, mainly in the Georgetown and Charleston areas. The rice became known as Carolina Gold, both for its color and its ability to produce great fortunes for plantation owners[14]")
(iii) rice
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice
("Rice culture in the southeastern US became less profitable with the loss of slave labor after the American Civil War, and it finally died out just after the turn of the 20th century. Today, people can visit the only remaining rice plantation in South Carolina that still has the original winnowing barn and rice mill from the mid-19th century at the historic Mansfield Plantation in Georgetown, South Carolina. The predominant strain of rice in the Carolinas was from Africa and was known as 'Carolina Gold.' The cultivar has been preserved and there are current attempts to reintroduce it as a commercially grown crop")
(iv) Koshihikari 越光
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koshihikari
(first created in 1956, by combining 2 different strains of Nourin No.1 農林1号 and Nourin No.22 農林22号 at the Fukui Prefectural Agricultural Research Facility 福井農事改良実験所（現：福井県農業試験場 Fukui Agricultural Experiment Station); section 1 Etymology: "The character for koshi (越) is used to represent the old Koshi Province 越国 [pronounced "koshi-no-cuni"], which stretched from present-day Fukui 福井[県] to Yamagata. Koshihikari can be translated as 'the light of Koshi 越の国に光輝く米'")
* The "nourin" is another way to Romanize/transliterate Japanese alphabet--same as "nōrin" where "ou" or "ō" signals a long vowel of "o."
* The Japanese pronunciations of kanji 越 and 国 are, respectively, "koshi" (as a noun) and "kuni."
(v) Dupont Circle
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dupont_Circle
(In 1882, Congress renamed the circle to "Dupont Circle," and authorized a memorial statue of Samuel Francis Du Pont, in recognition of his service as a rear admiral during the Civil War)
(c) "If you ask Thomet why he decided to grow rice in a region not known for it, he’ll look you dead in the eye and give you the same answer you might have heard from a 17th-century colonist: 'I eat rice.'”
dead (adv): "DIRECTLY <dead ahead>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dead
(d) "What exactly is SRI? Erika Styger, director of programs at the SRI International Network and Resources Center at Cornell University, lays out four practices that broadly define the system. They are transplanting seedlings at a young age (to promote disease and pest resistance) * * *"
It is better to write "to promote disease- and pest-resistance."
(e) System of Rice Intensification
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_of_Rice_Intensification
(developed in 1983 by the French Jesuit Father Henri de Laulanié in Madagascar)
(f) "'It’s [SRI is] not a method that lends itself to feeding several billion people,' [Michael] Klein[, vice president of marketing and communications for the USA Rice Federation, an advocacy group for the America rice industry,] adds. It’s an economic issue: Large-scale rice farmers, Klein says, simply would not be able to afford the labor to weed their fields."
(i) SRI may benefit from pesticide-resistant, genetically modified rice, which, however, is not commercially grown. Then again, using pesticide is not compatible with "organic" label.
(ii) genetically modified rice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_rice
("In 2000, the first two GM rice varieties both with herbicide-resistance, called LLRice60 and LLRice62, were approved in the United States. Later, these and other types of herbicide-resistant GM rice were approved in Canada, Australia, Mexico, and Colombia. However, none of these approvals resulted in commercialization[3]")
Please click footnote 3 to reach
ACS-OSØØ1-4, ACS-OSØØ2-5 (LLRICE06, LLRICE62). GM Crop Database, undated.
cera-gmc.org/index.php?action=gm_crop_database&mode=ShowProd&data=LLRICE06%2C+LLRICE62
(g) Oryza sativa
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryza_sativa
(section 4 History of domestication and cultivation' section 4.1 Origins) |
发表于 12-19-2013 16:50:42
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