OCR Text |
Show KNOW YOUR vjy NEIGHBOR ! LATIN AMERICAN RICE I The principal food of nearly one I third of the human race, rice has been said to be one of the most important foodstuffs of the world. Although it is not an indigenous food of this continent Latin Amer-! Amer-! - ica raised on a Medterranean culinary cul-inary tradition, makes of rice a standard article, one of the pillars of its diet. Even in the countries where it is not a staple food, it is used extensively as a substitute for potatoes and manioca. Wild rice was known to the inhabitants in-habitants of the New World be-' be-' fore its discovery, but it was the Spaniards who earlier had been introduced to it by the Arabs who brought over cultivated rice to some parts of South America. Rice was grown in Peru as early as the end of the 16th century. A hundred years later, it was cultivated culti-vated in the country to an appreciable appre-ciable extent although the first actual experiment of rice culture as such, in Latin America, seems to have taken place in Brazil. Brazilian Bra-zilian books and documents of the time "would indicate that this cereal was cultivated in certain sections of the country even in the 16th century, while it seems to have already been- an established Latin American rice-planters now is whether or not they will be able to compete on a price basis with the Far Eastern product in the post war era. Whatever the answer an-swer to that question may be, 4.1 i ,Kf V,nf nAAinrr rice to the list of important products pro-ducts of our hemisphere, a great deal of good has been done to the ecenomy of Latin America. industry Dy me miuuie ui uie century." An annual, the rice plant is grown most successfully in hot countries where plenty of water is available. However, the fact that it is not an exclusively tropical cereal and that its area of cultivation goes beyond the 45th degree of latitude makes this cultivation possible to all the countries coun-tries of Latin America. In spite of that, up to recent years, although al-though at least half of the nations of the hemisphere were small rice producers and exporters by$ a most perplexing phenomena, probably due to the cheapness of the foreign product all of them, including the United States, were buyers of rice, mostly from the Orient! However, shortly before World War TJ and the close of the Oriental Orien-tal market, Latin America came to a realization of the rice situation situa-tion and decided to do something .tons of rice and produced none. ! Today, the industry having grown probably more than any other agricultural ag-ricultural industry in the country, it produces a quantity sufficient to supply the entire home market and leave an export surplus of about 28,000 tons. This "miracle" has had a most beneficial effect on the nation's economy. Latin America is now approximately approxi-mately self-sufficient in the pro- about it. The production of this cereal was boosted and stimulated in a number of countries, nearly all adopting programs aimed at increased rice production and reduced re-duced imports. Some countries, such as Panama, placed an embargo em-bargo on rice imports to protect local farmers. In others, grain and land were distributed and technical techni-cal advice given by the governments govern-ments to encourage increased production. pro-duction. How favorable this "campaign" "cam-paign" has been -to the rice production pro-duction of Latin America is now proved by results and figures. Brazil, Ecuador (both among the large rice producers of the world) Peru, Paraguay, Colombia, Cuba and a host of others have steadily and greatly expanded their rice output. The case of Chile is particularly par-ticularly interesting. Twelve years ago, Chile imported 8,500 meteric duction of rice, the surplus of the exporting countries being disposed of largely in the neighboring deficit defi-cit countries. "Rice from Brazil and Ecuador makes up the bulk of imports into other countries of the continent, thus, to a large extent, ex-tent, replacing rice formerly obtained ob-tained from other parts of the world." What is more, much of the Oriental production of that cereal being, because of the war, unavailable, Latin America is contributing con-tributing to Allied lend-lease shipments ship-ments with rice. (An estimated 400,000,000 lbs. in 1942). An interesting inter-esting fact is that, in a great many countries, it is Oriental both Chinese and Japanese laborers labor-ers who have planted and are now working on the rice plantations of the American nations, under the American skies. The greatest concern of the |