Why we need to grow more rice in New Zealand
Pretty much the last place you'd think you'd find a rice paddy growing is on a hill in Nelson, but Yuki Fukuda is doing just that.
Yuki Fukuda says as New Zealand’s appetite for rice increases, growing more of the staple crop here makes sense.
Fukuda is an ecologist, who studied horticulture at Lincoln University, and says growing rice locally will give New Zealand more food security for a crop which is currently entirely imported.
Here Now presented by Kadambari Gladding is about the journeys people make to New Zealand, their identities and perspectives, all of which shape their life here.
“There's zero commercial production in New Zealand, so we are importing about $95 million worth of rice from overseas, which equates to about 85,000 tons, which is a lot of rice being imported, and there's emissions with the transport as well.”
New Zealand imports $95 million worth of rice a year.
FOODCOLLECTION GESMBH
We import from four main countries, she says.
“Thailand, Australia, Vietnam and India, but because these countries are close to equators they've been hammered by climate change impact recently.
“And India particularly is the most populous country in the world with 1.4 billion, but they are looking to add maybe 250 million people over the next 25 years, so they will need to meet the domestic demand more and more.”
In some parts of Asia, it has become too hot to successfully grow rice, she says.
“And also the rising sea level, some rice fields have had too much salinity in the water, and ironically, for New Zealand it's becoming warmer, so it's becoming more and more suitable to grow crops like rice.”
It is also a zero waste crop, she says.
“You could make a house out of it, clothing, dairy materials, everything from horticulture, it was used as a mulch or ropes to carry like a backpack, or even a bag to transport rice was made out of rice straw. So, it has culturally significant meaning to me.”
Her small 2 metre by 2 metre paddy yielded a decent harvest last year, she says. And similar rice growing experiments are going on in Kaiwaka, the Earthsong Eco-Village in Auckland and northern Waikato.
In Japanese culture, rice is a revered crop, she says.
“We have a saying in Japan that one single grain of rice has 88 gods dwelling in it, and it's really precious so you don't waste it. And once you start growing rice, you really realise how precious it is, so you won't waste a grain.”
Fukuda has just bought a hand-operated thresher with a grant she received from the Nelson City Council and plans to run workshops about what her experiments in growing rice have taught her.
