Rice is a finicky crop. Because rice paddies need standing water, they require complex irrigation systems that have to be built and drained each year. One farmer’s water use affects his neighbor’s yield. A community of rice farmers needs to work together in tightly integrated ways. Not wheat farmers. Wheat needs only rainfall, not irrigation. To plant and harvest it takes half as much work as rice does, and substantially less coordination and cooperation. And historically, Europeans have been wheat farmers and Asians have grown rice. The authors of the study in Science argue that over thousands of years, rice- and wheat-growing societies developed distinctive cultures...
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 03:30:09 +0000
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