BBC reports on possible rice replacements

by Shayna Glick (Subscribe to Shayna Glick's posts)
Posted Jun 4th 2008 11:03AM
Filed under: Grains, On the Blogs, Rice

A person dumping grain out of a container.

I'm sure we're all aware by now that there's a rice shortage going on. Lots of factors contribute, but the bottom line is that even in the first world there is some rationing going on. But what happens if it gets worse?

The BBC recently posted this article about some possible rice replacements. Quinoa, the native South American grain, was first on the list. I think a lot of people are aware of quinoa by now, but how many people have heard of fufu? That's a west African dish made from cassava, but apparently it's not well known outside of that region's population.

Most of the other grains in the BBC article are familiar, like millet and bulgur. I know there are plenty of other grains out there, and lots of edible plants that we just don't eat. Maybe we should start thinking about that kind of thing, now that we're having shortages of some of our staple foods.

Tags: BBC, bulgur, fufu, millet, quinoa, rice, shortage

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6-04-2008 @ 12:01PM

sng said...

The problem is burning food for fuel and then shifting production to crops for fuel instead of food. The reason there's no shortage of the other grains is because, compared to rice, consumption of them is very low. Try to shift to one or the other of them and you'll end up with a shortage just as quickly. The solution is to get rid of this biofuel stupidity. Thankfully it seems that people are starting to catch on to the fact that they're not even very good for the environment so with any luck they'll go away fairly soon.

6-04-2008 @ 12:42PM

Mathi said...

Renewable fuel resources are important. A better solution would be to use some of the miles and miles of space wasted on pretty lawns for small plots of vegtables. In Russia people provide a *lot* of their own food with millions of little vegtable gardens, and their growing conditions are pretty unfavorable. http://www.gardenrant.com/my_weblog/2008/01/russians-return.html

6-04-2008 @ 12:53PM

sng said...

Mathi,

Renewable fuel resources are important. But biofuels don't really fit the bill. Far too little bang for the buck and far too many secondary environmental impacts for the tradeoff to be worth it. The solution isn't a return to subsistence farming that's horribly unrealistic for large parts of the population but rather the development for truly renewable fuels. You may find the following links interesting.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1713431,00.html

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1688893,00.html

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