Does rice really use too much water?

The world produces some 700 million tons of paddy rice each year. This is enough to provide the staple food for more than three billion people, of which some 700 million live in poverty. The majority of rice is grown under irrigated conditions in which the fields are flooded from planting to harvest. Because of this flooding, rice is said to use a lot of water, about two and a half times the amount of water needed to grow a crop of wheat or maize. To ensure good yields, farmers and governments throughout the centuries (even millennia!) have developed irrigation infrastructure. And, since there are some 160 million hectares of planted rice land, rice has become the biggest single user of "developed" fresh water worldwide. Using some simple calculations, I once estimated that all the rice land receives 35-45% of all the world's irrigation water (which itself uses some 70% of all the world's developed water resources). Thus, rice is often portrayed as a "profligate" user of water—a crop we should stop growing to preserve our rapidly dwindling freshwater resources! So, should we?

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