wheat encouraged the colonization of the New World, allowed it to grow its wealth through farming fast, and accelerated the development of the Industrial Revolution, which increased the economic divergence between wheat and rice areas.

climate determined crops, which then heavily influenced our societies. Even decades after most of us have stopped farming, these effects carry into our subconscious cultures.

Wheat farming historically had a more seasonal rhythm with periods of relative quiet. Wheat is typically sown in the fall or spring and then mainly just left to grow with the rain. Aside from episodic weeding or guarding the fields, there was less continuous labor until harvest time. Harvest itself was a crunch period requiring many hands with sick

rice paddies also require a lot of work—twice as much as wheat. And that work is almost year-round: preparing paddies, raising seedlings in nurseries, transplanting every single seedling by hand into flooded fields, managing water, pumping it, [3] weeding, [4] harvesting, and threshing—often followed by a second rice crop or a winter crop. These ta

This means that rice nourishes families on half the land that wheat requires.

Which means population density in rice areas can be twice as high as in wheat areas, or four times with double cropping. [2] A hectare of land can feed 1.5 families with wheat and 6 with rice.

The Populations of Bread & Rice

Since a person consumes about 2,000 kca per

Wheat grows in cool, dry conditions. It can withstand frost, but rice can’t. Rice benefits from flooding, which kills competing weeds. Ponds can be formed and often contain fish, which creates protein for the farmers and fertilizer for the plants.

But this doesn’t fully explain it since it also rains a lot in Ireland, for example, but nobody grows rice there. You need the heat found closer to the equator: Rice grows in hot, wet, flat, floodable areas, whereas wheat prefers cooler, drier, better drained areas.