this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
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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.
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.
Preach. It's a far cry from almonds lol
I would love to see how this sort of online propaganda goes over in the East Asian part of the world. Or just Eastern part of the world in general.
Alfalfa has entered the chat
...unless there's a profit to be made. Hype rice into the next superfood and watch people grow it in the desert.
ricemaxxing
5/7
People (by which I mean extremely large agro-businesses) are growing soybeans and corn in the desert because it's the highest economic yield per acre grown. Almost nothing competes with it. So it's not just that a profit has to be made, but also that a larger profit than corn or soybeans has to be made. Which is unlikely, given how much bio-engineering and infrastructure capital has gone into both of those crops.
If Americans ever embrace rice I'll eat 4 pairs of vintage high top Doc Martens
What until you hear what they used slaves to vote in South Carolina.
Murican's eat a lot of rice, and beans, at least in the southwest
Maybe it's a regional thing.. in my area the supermarkets put rice in the "ethnic" aisle 🤦
US produces something like 7 million tonnes of rice every year, mostly for internal consumption. It's not anywhere near China or India, but the US does already eat a shitload of rice.
"Millions of lifelong rice-eaters suffer from starvation as rice prices skyrocket to unbelieveable historic highs as the US decides on its new micro-hyper-trend."