Food Facts, Episode 3, Rice
Courtesy of New York Public Library
Let’s talk about rice. West Africans cultivated two types of rice (one coarse and red, the other very small and white). The Portuguese introduced Asian rice from the Far East, which most likely complemented rather than substituted for the two types of rice indigenous to Africa. Groups between Cape Verde and the Gold Coast cultivated so much rice that they became known as the people of the Rice Coast. The African slave trade introduced rice cultivation to the British controlled Carolinas and Georgia. From their rice exports sent the cash crop around the world before the American Revolution.