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To anyone wondering, no, rice is not hurting the climate. Unlike many water-intense crops, people are not trying to grow rice in the middle of the American desert.
Water use and climate impact are two distinct issues (their connections notwithstanding). Californian almond farming is a catastrophe for regional water systems, but its greenhouse gas emissions aren’t much of a concern. Conversely, rice farming on flooded fields has substantial greenhouse gas emissions despite its being rather unproblematic for regional water systems.
Substantial is severely overstated as any crop you would replace rice with where rice is grown in water would objectively destroy all local water cycles if not the entire local ecosystem. That would have a much greater impact on climate change than if rice accounted for 100% of all calories eaten globally.
A) Rice paddies are generally in wetlands and swamps, protecting these areas, any other grain you would grow here would destroy that wetland biome. Corn especially would essentially render the entire area sterile because
B) Domesticated rice grown in water does not use any pesticides or herbicides whatsoever. There’s no need for it. Occasionally, in specific areas, you’ll need scare crows, frequent human activity, or crabs/ducks depending on the exact pest you’re getting rid of, but you don’t need glyphosate. This has massive knock on effects for climate, fewer herbicides and pesticides means more carbon being sequestered. Fewer herbicides and pesticides in water means more microorganisms turning CO2 back into oxygen and sequestering the carbon in tasty tasty microscopic corpses. Which brings us to
C) Methane and the GHG cycle: While methane is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2, it also has practically no shelf life in the atmosphere. It is a natural part of the GHG cycle and even if all grains everywhere were converted to rice, we could not generate enough methane to effect the climate. It would decay to hydrogen within ten years in the upper atmosphere (versus 50 or more for CO2) but more importantly every single type of forest sequesters it more efficiently than CO2. Saying a natural source of CH4 that is easily accounted for by growing it upwind of a forest, like it almost always is, is a serious driver of climate change or even a risk for it is silly doomerism.
The truth is climate change is 100% a matter of fossil fuels. If we stop using fossil fuels, we will immediately stall climate change. Nothing else we can realistically do except burning fossil fuels will cause climate change, and even if we go full net zero on every other thing we do, without stopping fossil fuels, we will not make any progress whatsoever. Even if we used 100% ethanol fuel in ICE vehicles, we would stop climate change. Because we would not be introducing ancient sequestered energy back into the system, we would be taking energy from the system one year, and putting it back in the next.
Rice is the same. All methane renewed by growing rice will be sequestered or decayed in less time than it will take for properly dried and stored rice to decay, and none of whats generated would effect the total amount of methane circulating in the system.
I never did understand why we didn’t just grow the almonds in the rain soaked south east. It’s not like they don’t travel well.
SHHHH don’t give them any ideas
Alfalfa has entered the chat
Australian desert, though…
We’re talking about the Earth, not some fictional hellscape of drop bears, made up plants like Eucalyptus, and giant flamethrower wielding spiders.
Well it is hurting climate in one way and that’s by methane emissions. Growing any crop in standing water is gonna create an anaerobic environment where methane is released. Rice therefore is expected to have larger environmental footprint than other grains because the carbon dioxide emissions should be similar as rice and other grains need similar amounts of fertilizer. Animal agriculture still has a larger share in the methane pie but rice’s contribution is not insignificant
Given the number of calories per tonne of methane produced, no, no it’s not hurting the climate.
This kinda complain is the same as ‘well if we just eliminate humans we’ll solve climate change,’ like yeah, no shit. But the point is keeping humans alive and rice is uniquely good at just that.
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And now together: Change your diet for the climate, eat the rich 👏👏
*with rice
capitalists really hate this one simple diet trick!
I swear, whenever someone talks about how “humanity” is killing the planet, or “humanity” is evil or something like that, I get so irrationally mad. It’s not humanity, it’s like less than 1% of people that are bringing this planet down
if we just eliminate humans we’ll solve climate change
Some of us just like to keep our options open.
I’m just replying to the comment above mine that says rice is not hurting the climate. That’s simply factually wrong. I’m also comparing rice to other grains, not rice to growing nothing at all. We could improve the climate impact of agriculture by switching to other carbs that are just as productive while having a lesser environmental impact, such as Maize and potatoes. However I don’t think we should actually do that as some people eat rice for cultural reasons and the impact rice has, as many have pointed out, is dwarfed by animal agriculture. So switching away from rice while still eating beef would feel a bit hypocritical. However it’s still true that rice is far from the most environmentally friendly carb source.
And I replied telling you you were wrong.
Rice is one of the most environmentally friendly carb sources, and in its native environments is an essential plant. Corn takes up more space and the production and refining creates more CO2 than rice. Potatoes are much more vulnerable to rot and much more likely to fail, not to mention the much higher fertilizer requirements.
Climate change is not one thing. Methane isn’t the enemy. Hell CO2 isn’t the enemy. It is taking out things out of balance. If we were to eliminate rice and just grow corn, yes, we’d drop 10% of methane production… except we wouldn’t because corn requires 5x the fertilizer and fertilizer production is a larger contributor to GHG emissions than aviation and shipping.
Corn is also horribly space inefficient outside the US. Not just outside the Americas, but outside specifically the midwest in the US. Despite it now being attempted to be grown on every continent there is no place on Earth besides the US and Canada that corn becomes more productive per hectacre than rice. It simply cannot replace rice, which is more productive on every single other continent.
So that’s 5x the fertilizer, at least 1.5x the space (up to 3x the space) which then logarithmically increase the amount of CO2 produced for transportation and production, all while destroying native ecosystems (or at least ecosystems that have adapted to rice farming over the last few thousand years), oh and we can’t forget water management systems would need to change drastically so add 50 years of construction to any CO2 calcs.
‘Methane bad’ is true, sure, but we can’t look at one single source, which provides HALF OF ALL CALORIES CONSUMED BY HUMANS, and say that’s a thing that needs to switch. If we replaced corn with rice tomorrow the world would have a net negative GHG production from where we started. The same is not true in reverse, despite rice causing a minor amount of separate methane production.
Doesn’t rice grown without standing water eliminate that problem? I have no clue about which varieties one could grow like this though. Or how much of a harvest one could expect in comparison.
I don’t know either, but the places where I’ve seen rice growing is on very steep mountainous areas where would have been jungle, and lots of rain. It’s deforested to make way for rice, and there’s not much else humans can use it for. So while people can comment it can be done without water, places like this I think it would be a challenge, especially when yeild is important to very poor farmers, and a huge population needs feeding.
Sorry but you just produced a whole lot of bullshit. You admit that maize is more productive than rice in the US and Canada. But you never reflect more on that. The reason that listed average yields for maize is lower than for rice in most other countries has a very simple explanation. Rice is higher value per kg and if you can grow rice in a certain environment, you are very likely to do so. Maize then gets pushed to less productive land that can’t support rice, either because it’s too mountainous or it’s too dry. However what we see is that when maize and rice are grown on the same land the maize tends to either yield similar or more than rice. A few years ago I made an agricultural study trip to Indonesia where they grew rice everywhere where rice could be grown but grew mostly maize on the rest of the land. Traditionally they used to have highland rice varieties that could be grown without irrigation but they were mostly abandoned when maize came, because it was far more productive. All animals where also fed maize because maize was cheaper to produce than rice. Even animal farmers whose grain never ended up in market, were growing maize to feed their chickens, because it yielded the most. Maize has 4C photosynthesis that’s more productive than rice’s 3C photosynthesis in subtropical and tropical climates.
Now the claim you make that maize uses 5x more fertilizer I have no idea where you got that from, but I’m guessing straight out of your ass. If we are talking nitrogen it’s about 22kg per ton for maize and 18kg per ton for rice. However since maize has a higher protein content the nitrogen use efficiency ends up being close to the same. And nowhere near the 5x fertiliser claim you pulled. You also briefly mention water but rice is almost universally irrigated while maize is chiefly rainfed.
Carbon release from biological sources are all net neutral. Every single atom released came from the environment in the first place. Every story about grain or cows ruining the environment is propaganda to protect the real culprit in fossil fuels. Every single atom from that source is extra material that had been sequestered for millions of years. That is the only additive source we have the ability to stop.
Is still looks like the world population could use rice as the main source of carbs and it wouldn’t be nearly as harmful as cattle.
Who’s using cattle as their main source of carbs?
Rice doesn’t have to be grown in flooded paddies, that’s just an ancient, chemical-free way to prevent weeds from growing. You could still grow rice the same way you’d grow wheat or corn and it can actually be less work to do it that way. It would, of course, require more reliance on herbicides for weed control, though, which is its own can of worms. The water also allows other means of food production to happen alongside the rice growing, such as raising fish or ducks. I wonder if symbiotic dual-use of the water would offset, or even directly reduce, the relatively higher methane levels that might be generated within the water. Bonus points if you hook up a turbine to the outflow when you go to drain your paddies.
These are definitely interesting perspectives. However, even though rice can be produced with much fewer emissions, today the emissions are high. This is why @Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz is perfectly right in saying that rice is hurting the climate.
(Dry farming accounted for just 4% of global rice production in 2022 [1].)
It’s impossible to ‘hurt the climate’ using non-ancient non-sequestered sources.
Afaik Rice doesn’t have to be submerged. It can be, so it’s done for weed control. Now we can do weed control with lasers, so we’ll see what the future holds.
I’ve known a lot of people that do this research for a living. You want to know how we could have a much bigger impact without worrying what people eat: grow food locally.
It’s actually very simple. Shipping things around the world multiple times before they even get to our plates is absolute insanity.
I think your average American doesn’t even understand that most of the world eats food based on what’s in season. We just ship it in from all over so that there’s barely such a thing as an item being unavailable due to it being out of season.
manure and enteric fermentation
Seems like they are trying to avoid saying “animal agriculture”
Can this be solved by making the water just a little bit less stagnant?
Yes, except that the water in a rice paddy is not particularly stagnant in the first place.
You know, it’s a food crop, so it’s generally maintained.
People don’t want to eat rice that comes out of a sick looking pool of water, and nobody wants to live near a ton of stagnant ponds where mosquitos will go crazy.
Oh, you like eating? That’s destroying the climate you bozo. Meanwhile some billionaire is flying their private jet a town over to get a massage.
And to private islands full of other billionaires doing the same thing, and to play golf on the other side of the country every weekend, and to to middle east to pick up even more bigger jets from oil barons.
Mama mama look, it’s billionaire eco fascist propaganda. they don’t care about the environment, they just want people to starve.
Maybe, if you’re only talking about individual people, but the big polluters are corporations, not people. That’s where the focus should be.
Only if you ignore all the stuff people consume. If a corporation pollutes and you buy their stuff, you’re on the hook for that pollution. We all are. We should be buying stuff that doesn’t pollute, and finding ways to save energy, water, and packaging.
Ok, that’s an excellent sentiment, but utterly worthless in the real world. People will buy what is available and what is cheap. A handful of people choosing to be conscious with what they purchase is a drop in the bucket compared to what the masses will do.
I get it. Convincing the people to not buy stuff that pollutes should be the easy route, but it’s not. And unfortunately we don’t live in the world of “it should be this way”, we live in reality. And in reality, the only real way to stop pollution heavy products from being sold is to go after the companies making them directly. Boycotts alone will not work because, again, as long as the products are available and cheap, people will buy them; morals be damned.
Not always. I’ve always tried to buy what is better for the planet, even if that costs a bit more. Or will repair stuff instead of toss and buy.
There are dozens of us 😀
Ye, but you gotta look at it at scale. BP can crash ansingle tanker and pollute for the ewuivalent of 10 generations of your family (all branches). This type of scale of pollution needs to be addressed by governments via policies and their enforcement.
Totally agree on that. But I will also carry out my shopping in a cloth bag i brought into tue store instead of plastic at the till.
The more things are unwanted, the less oil derivatives that get made, which reduces profits. Not enough to dissaude big oil, but better than funding them and spin off industries
Unfortunately, convincing corporations to not pollute isn’t any easier. Using the tools of government to regulate them even harder still. It all comes down to people and what they want. Try to circumvent them and they’ll fight back.
Just look at what’s happening right now. Trump is rolling back tons of environmental and agricultural (anti- animal cruelty) regulations all the time. What activists had counted as previous wins are now going away.
Oh bullshit. Governance can absolutely compel industry to reform.
And political movements can undo government reforms, as we’re seeing right now.
Government reforms are still more effective than anything else we’ve tried. By focusing on individual reform, you’re playing right into the hands of the 1%. There’s even a book about it!
You can’t enact government reforms without winning an election, and to do that you need to convince individual voters. But then if you enact your reforms without a strong mandate, those reforms will be gone next election.
Anyway, that book is about nudge theory which is NOT what I’m arguing for. I already knew that bit of pop psychology was BS years ago.
Yeah, copy the big corporate agenda: blame the consumers. Shift the blame onto them, so you won’t be held accountable for producing most pollution. Consumer pollution is just a tiny fraction compared to corporate and government pollution.
I don’t give a shit about assigning blame. There’s too much of that crap around here. It’s completely unproductive.
Says the guy blaming the consumers. Isn’t that a bit hypocritical?
So what do you propose? Not blaming anyone and just continue without solving the issue?
I believe we need to put the blame on the big pollutors and create policies reducing the amount of pollution. Like reducing lifestock, make devices repairable and stop companies from reducing the product life span to just over warrenty periods. Stop building AI data centers, make them pay tax which can be used for climate improving projects and highly restrict them from freely polluting ground water, among other things (I prefer them to close completely, but I’m afraid that’s too much to ask for). There are so many ways to reduce pollution by focusing on the products instead of the consumers. The consumer has no say in whether their new washing machine only lives for 2 years and 2 months instead of 20 years, like they used to. Or whether their device is made with a replaceable battery, like they were before.
Waste and pollution starts with the companies forcing the consumers to consume more.
You talk about energy, water and packaging. Guess who uses most?
This reminds me of he time I got arrested for peeing in the lake right next to the chemical company dumping waste in via a 26 inch Dia. Pipe.
You peeing is indecent AND pollution. That heavy metal dumping is just pollution /s
I’d rather watch somebody peeing than watch what’s coming out of the pipe. Indecent is a judgement call.
Sadly not your judgement. Some puritanical judgmental (maybe pedophile) gets to decide this decades before you are born
There’s actually a really interesting story here. Rice production, in addition to deforestation, has been linked to starting global warming about 5000 years ago. While the climate should have been naturally cooling due to decreased insolation, the methane released from the start of intensive rice agriculture and the CO2 from deforestation prevented this. Here’s a summary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_anthropocene
P.S. fuck capitalists
The article just says that it was due to the rise of agriculture, not rice in particular.
Edit: and fuck capitalists
Yes like agriculture uses resources, resources need to be responsibly managed, not responsibly managing said resources either because we were 5,000 years ago and didn’t know better or if it’s now and we do know better we just aren’t willing to pay for it is what causes climate change not things just existing
Apologies, here is the original article by Ruddiman. Methane production is linked to rice farming since it involves creating artificial wetlands.
https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Ruddiman2003.pdf
Thanks for sharing.
I kind of think we should first address the things that have changed the climate in the couple centuries since they were invented, and then tackle the stuff that took 5000 years.
For sure. The early anthropocene basically just delayed the onset of the next ice age. The modern anthropocene is ending the entire ice age paradigm and sending us back to the hothouse earth that we had 50 million years ago.
Rice is bad for the environment, but you can scarf down that two pound grass fed steak without worrying. /S
Almond milk? That uses so much water!
chugs a cup of cow milk
Unironically, almond farming does use a huge amount of water. It also disproportionately kills bees compared to other crops (super heavy on pesticide use).
Yeah, compared to other plant milks, it’s not great. Still miles better than cow milk
Always trying to blame the common person.
Am just gonna stick to blaming LLM hosting data centers for hurting the environment. (As of 2026)
Haha I’m killing the planet cause I can only afford to eat brown rice with beans. It’s not even the CO2, it’s the gigantic turds I’m dropping in the bowl #fibermaxxing
You’re allowed to do something that mildly affects the climate in order to not die.
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Replace “bowl of rice” with “cheeseburger”, though.
Yes please
Still pales in comparison to the billionaire leeches.
I propose we test our hypothesis: let’s remove all the leeches and take new measurements after a few years.
Farting also hurts the climate but it’s on a waaaaaaay smaller scale than cows even in a worst case scenario.
Farting is why cows are on the scale.
It’s the burbs maaaaaan, their farts are not an issue.
Because it’s all a lie, nothing to fix there, it’s their way to impose more surveillance on people, it’s always about surveillance and control
