rice culture

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the complex of agricultural practices, social institutions, ritual observances, dietary traditions, and cultural values organised around the cultivation and consumption of rice across the societies of South and Southeast Asia, East Asia, and parts of West Africa where rice is the staple grain and foundation of food security; in Southeast Asia, wet rice cultivation — paddy agriculture in flooded fields — requires sophisticated water management, labour coordination, and ecological knowledge that has shaped settlement patterns, social organisation, and political hierarchy for millennia; rice appears at the centre of rituals marking birth, marriage, harvest, and death across the region, and its presence in cultural practice extends far beyond its nutritional role; the Green Revolution transformed rice productivity through high-yielding varieties and chemical inputs but also disrupted traditional ecological and social relationships embedded in rice culture