Marcus Hiles is a talented real estate entrepreneur whose interests
include charitable donations, wine, travels and rice. Of all the foods
known to humanity, rice is one of the gentlest. The grains have curves
on both sides and are connected at each end.
In many Asian
countries, people believe that rice is the connecting chain between
heaven and earth. In many Asian countries, rice is a symbol of energy,
life, fertility and beauty. The time and place of first cultivation of
rice are not known. Pottery imprints of grains of rice in Thailand date
to around 4000 BC. There, just as in many other places throughout Asia,
including China and India, rice is a fundamental agricultural crop and
is being used at every meal. Rice grows in a lot of places in the world,
from the plains in Texas, to the mountains of Nepal, from the tropic of
India to the dry parts of Australia. The only continent where people do
not grow rice is Antarctica.
In North America, the colonists
started to plant rice in 1600s. By the 1700s, rice has become a valuable
export commodity and has made a lot of money for some American
plantation owners, especially in the Carolinas. The Industrial
Revolution was the reason why the rice-growing industry eventually moved
inland to states like Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas. The Gold
Rush was the reason for rice being planted in California. Today,
California and Arkansas are the top two rice-growing states in the
country.
Even though rice is a very simple grain, rice experts
and enthusiasts such as Marcus Hiles suggest that there are more than
forty-thousand varieties of rice in the world. Rice usually grows in
paddies full of water. At first they look like green grass. As the
plants keep on growing, the water drains. The rice is ready for
harvesting when the color of the plants resembles the color of straw.
