256 FIELD CROPS 



316. Importance of the Crop. Rice is one of the world's 

 greatest food crops, being a staple article of diet for several 

 hundred millions of people in India, China, and Japan. 

 The total annual production of cleaned rice is something like 

 175,000,000,000 pounds, indicating an annual production of 

 rough rice, or paddy, of about 280,000,000,000 pounds, as 

 compared with the world's wheat crop of 204,000,000,000 

 pounds, and a slightly smaller corn crop. By far the greater 

 part of this enormous crop is raised in Asia. India has an 

 annual production of 70,000,000,000 pounds of cleaned 

 rice, China 50,000,000,000 pounds, and Japan 18,000,000,- 

 000 pounds. The total European production of rice amounts 

 to about 12,000,000,000 pounds annually, most of which is 

 grown in Italy and Spain. 



In comparison with these figures, the production of rice 

 in the United States is insignificant, the average yield for 

 the five years from 1905 to 1909 being only 534,000,000 

 pounds. Practically all of this crop is grown in the three 

 states of Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. In slavery times, 

 South Carolina produced most of the rice grown in the 

 United States, but after the slaves were freed the industry 

 rapidly declined. The fields along the Atlantic Coast are 

 small and not adapted to the use of modern seeding and 

 harvesting machinery, while the level plains of Louisiana 

 and Texas, with abundant water for irrigation from wells 

 and rivers, furnish ideal conditions for the cheap production 

 of rice on a large scale. Since the introduction of modern 

 machinery into this district, about 1885, there has been an 

 immense increase in the production of rice, though the 

 United States still imports about 200,000,000 pounds of 

 cleaned rice annually. In 1910, 371,000 acres were devoted 

 to rice production in Louisiana, 265,000 acres in Texas, and 

 60,000 acres in Arkansas. The average yield to the acre 



