Ecologist: Rice growing good for environment
Nelson woman Yuki Fukuda has grown rice in her garden, and is now helping others to do the same.
The kilo of grain her small plot yielded this summer was the first successful rice crop she knew of in Whakatū/ Nelson, and possibly Te Waipounamu/ the South Island too, the ecologist said.
For Fukuda, who grew up in Japan, the trial was prompted not just by nostalgia, but concern about food security and greenhouse gas emissions. If some of New Zealand’s meat or dairy producers switched to growing rice, it could significantly cut this country’s emissions, she said.
Growing the food staple in Aotearoa would also reduce the risks and costs of relying on imports, as crops overseas suffered from floods and drought, Fukuda said.
Rice isn’t currently grown commercially in New Zealand, but some people had grown it for personal consumption in the North Island, she said.
From the 1990s until recently, Japanese-born man, Yoshimasa Sakurai produced rice in Northland, on a 131 square metre plot in Kaiwaka. It was from Sakurai that Fukuda received the seed she used to grow her rice, in a mini- paddy field at her family home in central Nelson.
A friend helped dig out the four square metre plot in October last year. It was lined with a plastic sheet to prevent water loss (the land was designed to drain, being at risk of slips).
After adding soil, horse manure and water, she planted the seedlings in November, later using seaweed extract as a fertiliser.
The neat rows of green shoots she remembered from the rice paddy fields in Japan each spring didn’t eventuate at first - after overwatering.
But the plants survived, and in January started flowering, yielding a lush crop that was ready to harvest in March.
Fukuda used a home made thresher to detach the rice husks from the straw, and used a mortar and pestle to remove the grains from the husks.
She is planning to go to Japan next year to bring back a thresher, a machine that de-husks rice grains and another that turns the brown rice into white.
Around 40 people attended presentations she held at her home in March about growing the rice.
Fukuda is planning to hold workshops in June or July on how to grow rice in buckets, as she did in 2021 when she and her husband were renting when their family home was being built.
Three friends were already now experimenting growing rice in different parts of the Nelson/Tasman region.
“Let’s grow rice in Te Tauihu,” Fukuda said. “We can accumulate knowledge and act as a seed rice bank for regional food resilience.”
Research showed Kiwis currently consumed about 17kg of rice a year, compared to 1kg in 1961, Fukuda said. It was all imported - 30% from Thailand, 15% Australia, and the rest mostly from Vietnam, India, Pakistan and Cambodia - she said.
Crops in those countries were increasingly being damaged by the effects of climate change, she said.
In Thailand, more than 1280 hectares of rice fields had been damaged after being under water for more than a week.
Fukuda said the price of rice in New Zealand had shot up.
Australia used planes to plant its rice, and, as fuel prices rose, it seemed “too risky” to rely on imports, she said.
A rice trial 50 years ago in Te Puke near Tauranga found rice could be grown profitably in New Zealand as a wet ground rice, but overnight temperatures in Canterbury were too cool.
A warming climate might make it more suitable to grow rice in New Zealand now, and in the South Island too, Fukuda said.
The South Island was at approximately the same latitude as Hokkaido, the coldest part of Japan, which grew the Yukihikari variety of rice that Fukuda successfully grew in Nelson.
Japan grows dry land rice as well, and Fukuda is keen to see if this would also suit New Zealand, she said.
Flooded rice emitted about 10 times less methane per kilogram of food product than beef cattle, but if using the dry-land method, this could be reduced by up to 85%, research showed.