Rice

People all over the world eat rice. Millions of people in Asia, Africa, and South America​ eat it everyday of their lives. Some people eat almost nothing but rice. Rice is a kind of grass. There are more than seven thousand (7,000) kinds of rice. Most kinds are water plants. Farmers grow rice in many countries, even in the southern part of the United States and in eastern Australia. No one really knows where rice came from. Some scientists think it started to grow in two places. They think that one kind of rice grew in southern Asia thousands of years ago. Someone in China wrote about it almost five thousand (5,000) years ago.

Another kind probably grew in West Africa. Other scientists think rice came from India, and Indian travelers took it to other parts of the world. There are two main ways to grow rice. Upland rice grows in dry soil. Most rice grows in wet soil. People in many countries do all of the work by hand. This is the same way farmers worked hundreds of years ago. In some countries now use machines on their rice farmers. The farmers all use fertilizer. Some insects are enemies of rice. Farmers poison them.