Should we eat less rice? ⏲️ 6 Minute English

15,443 views ・ 2025-03-13

BBC Learning English


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Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English.
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I'm Neil. And I'm Beth.  
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Neil, what type of foods do you often eat?
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Well, basic things to fill me up.
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That's sort of bread, potatoes.
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Well, food like this, which is regularly eaten by many people,
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is known as a staple. In Britain,
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bread is a popular staple, but for large parts of the world,
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there's another food, which is number one –
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rice. That's right.
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Over half the world's population eats rice
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as the staple food, especially in Asia.
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But rice is a very thirsty crop which needs lots of water to grow,
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and this is becoming a problem
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because of droughts and flooding caused by climate change.
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In this programme, we'll be hearing about a pioneering new technique helping
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farmers to grow rice in the face of a changing climate.
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As usual, we'll be learning some useful new words and phrases.
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And remember, you can find all the vocabulary from this programme
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on our website: bbclearningenglish.com.
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But first I have a question for you, Beth.
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Just now I mentioned that rice is a very thirsty crop.
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So, how much water is needed to grow one kilogram of rice?
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Is it a. 1,000 to 3,000 litres,
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b. 3,000 to 5,000 litres, or c. 5,000 to 7,000 litres?
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I'm going to say c. 5,000 to 7,000 litres.
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Well, we'll find out if that's right at the end of the programme.
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Dr Yvonne Pinto is director general of the International Rice Research Institute,
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or IRRI for short, based in the Philippines.
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Here, she explains more about the global popularity of rice
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to BBC World Service programme,
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The Food Chain.
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Between 50 and 56% of the world's population
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rely on rice as the principal staple.
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Now that's roughly about four billion people.
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And it is one of those commodities that is grown really extensively,
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particularly in South Asia and Southeast Asia.
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But increasingly the appetite for it is growing in continents like Africa.
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And of course, there are also Latin American and European rice varieties.
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Rice is a commodity, a produce that can be bought and sold.
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Like other crops, rice has varieties, different types,
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for example brown rice, long grained rice, or basmati.
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Much of the research into rice today is focussed
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on making new varieties that can adapt to the changing environment
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and grow in conditions of either too much or too little water.
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Over half the world's population eats rice,
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and there's a growing demand in Africa and Europe too.
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So clearly there's an appetite, a strong desire, for rice worldwide.
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So, is it possible to grow rice in a more eco-friendly way?
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Jean-Philippe Laborde, director of rice company
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Tilda thinks the answer lies
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in a new growing technique called alternate wet drying, or AWD for short.
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To grow rice, farmers go through cycles of flooding their fields or paddies,
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which then dry out and need to be flooded again. With AWD, measuring
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pipes are placed 15cm underground so that farmers can check water levels
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at any part of the field.
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Normally, rice needs 25 cycles of flooding and drying out to grow,
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but using AWD this is reduced to 20 cycles, saving farmers water
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and reducing methane emissions.
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Here's Jean-Philippe Laborde telling
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Ruth Alexander, presenter of BBC World Service's
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The Food Chain, how he began his AWD experiment with farmers in India.
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We've got, last year, 1,268 farmers on board,
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applying this technique to reduce the overall methane emissions.
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And how did you persuade those farmers to give it a go?
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That was quite challenging because obviously the main challenge is
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for farmers the apprehension to lose revenues.
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They need to see tangible results at the end of the crop, that they are getting
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obviously something better.
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Many Indian farmers got on board with Jean-Phillipe's experiment.
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If you get on board with something, you agree to a plan of action
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and get involved.
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In other words, you give it a go.
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You try doing something to see if it works.
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As it turned out, the new technique produced
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tangible results – results which are real and measurable.
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Using AWD, the amounts of water and electricity
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needed to grow rice decreased, methane gas emissions reduced,
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and on top of that, the amount of rice yielded increased.
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Right, Neil, isn't it time you revealed the answer to your question?
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I asked how many litres of water are needed to grow
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just one kilogram of rice?
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And the answer was 3,000 to 5,000 litres,
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so thirsty, but not as thirsty as you thought.
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OK, let's recap the vocabulary we've learned in this programme,
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starting with commodity –
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a product like rice that can be bought and sold.
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Varieties of something are different types of it.
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If there's an appetite for something,
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there's a strong desire or demand for it.
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If you get on board with an idea or a plan,
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you agree to do something and get involved with doing it.
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To give it a go means to try doing something.
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And finally, the adjective tangible means real and measurable.
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Once again, our six minutes are up.
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If you've enjoyed this programme, why not try practising the new vocabulary
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you've learnt with our worksheet.
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It's available to download now from our website, bbclearningenglish.com,
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and you could also try out the quiz while you're there.
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Goodbye for now. Bye!
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