←Back
Rice is not as nice with global warming. Harvest records from Japan and
China suggest that high night-time temperatures reduce the quality of
rice, a staple food for billions of people. Modelling suggests that rice
quality will continue to decline if climate change goes unchecked.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03668-9
########################################################################

|u/AutoModerator - 18 hours
|
|Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to
|keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people
|want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal
|lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are
|allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere
|in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules](
|https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to
|all other comments.  ---  **Do you have an academic degree?** We can
|verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your
|area of expertise. [Click here to
|apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/).  ---  User:
|u/MistWeaver80   Permalink:
|https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03668-9  ---  *I am a bot,
|and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the
|moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you
|have any questions or concerns.*


|u/RebeccaBlue - 15 hours
|
|Should read "rice quality \*will\* decline as climate change goes
|unchecked", because no one with any real power is ever going to take it
|seriously.  (at least in the US)


  |u/FireMaster1294 - 10 hours
  |
  |Bold of you to think the US is gonna be the only issue here. China and
  |India give *zero* fucks about the world and have over a quarter of the
  |global population. So…yeah…


    |u/optiplex9000 - 9 hours
    |
    |Since we currently live in bizarro world, China is looking like it
    |might be the next leader in the flight against climate change
    |https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/14/trump-might-cede-climate-leadership-
    |to-china-.html


      |u/JMEEKER86 - 7 hours
      |
      |Yeah, China went hard on coal in order to industrialize as quickly
      |as possible, but since becoming industrialized they have been
      |making a hard push for better solar and battery technology.
      |They're positioned to make some big changes as long as demographic
      |collapse doesn't get them first, although that would also decrease
      |their carbon footprint...


        |u/jazzwhiz - 5 hours
        |
        |Of course they're doing so by buying up Africa anyway they can.


      |u/BuzzBadpants - 6 hours
      |
      |It will be the next hegemonic superpower. Better start learning
      |Mandarin.


        |u/AtotheCtotheG - 5 hours
        |
        |Too hard, good luck to ‘em though


      |u/-JustPassingBye- - 2 hours
      |
      |They are not. It’s a facade. They are creating mass amounts of
      |pollution compared to what their image shows. China is a very
      |sneaky country, and not denying all the evils of the US, but
      |people need to open their eyes to what China is up to.


    |u/devilkazama - 9 hours
    |
    |Ironically they eat the most rice


    |u/Turbo_turbo_turbo - 5 hours
    |
    |What a stupid American-centric comment. China , love em or hate em,
    |is far exceeding the US when it comes to climate change.   But that
    |doesn’t sell as well as them being evil villains so go off ig


    |u/TurtleMOOO - 8 hours
    |
    |From what I’ve heard, china is making changes. Hard to say what is
    |true when it comes to news about china.


      |u/CuriosTiger - 5 hours
      |
      |I visited China this year. I was expecting Beijing to be super-
      |smoggy. It was not. Clean air and blue skies. I was genuinely
      |surprised.


        |u/Several_Puffins - 3 hours
        |
        |I lived in China 2007-2009. I realised I had heard birdsong for
        |the first time in 6 months while walking in a park, then found a
        |speaker in a rock that was piping the "birdsong" in.  Went to
        |visit in 2018 and there were just birds everywhere. It's way
        |better than it was.   A lot of media coverage wants to
        |scaremonger about fake bad things so the narrative can be pushed
        |that we shouldn't fight climate change, because China won't and
        |we'll fall behind.  Not like there aren't plenty of very
        |sinister things to talk about, like Uyghur concentration camps
        |and the politburo executing its rivals for corruption and giving
        |itself a life term of office.


        |u/bpsavage84 - 4 hours
        |
        |If you watch any Western media coverage on China, they will
        |often use stock footage from a decade ago to make it seem like
        |China is still drowning in pollution. While China is still
        |polluted, they've been making progress every year to reduce it,
        |and it's very noticeable to anyone living or regularly going
        |there for business.


          |u/CuriosTiger - 4 hours
          |
          |Indeed. Not just media coverage, but travel guides and the
          |like all warned about smog in Beijing. And I have asthma, so
          |it was something I was concerned about.  I was pleasantly
          |surprised, to put it mildly. Now if they could only make the
          |same kind of progress with smoking..


            |u/Kaymish_ - 2 hours
            |
            |Here in New Zealand it has taken decades upon decades of
            |bipartisan work on smoking cessation to get to the point
            |where a rising age floor and eventual ban is plausible.
            |Unfortunately the cigarette companies bribed the incoming
            |government and broke the cycle, but they will be gone year
            |after next and progress can resume. China will also need
            |years and years of work to even begin seeing any progress.


            |u/bpsavage84 - 4 hours
            |
            |Smoking has to take it's course. It's a habit thing so the
            |older guys have to die out. Young people smoke a lot less
            |and vaping is niche due to a general ban.


              |u/CuriosTiger - 4 hours
              |
              |Somehow, in Europe and North America, "older guys" who
              |smoked in the 50s, 60s and 70s have largely managed to
              |quit. Public health campaigns work. This is one area where
              |China doesn't even seem to be trying.


                |u/bpsavage84 - 4 hours
                |
                |Agreed. That's because Big Tobacco is state-owned.


    |u/RebeccaBlue - 6 hours
    |
    |Where did I say the US was "the only issue here" ?


    |u/ohnofluffy - 7 hours
    |
    |Yeah, look at Delhi today and tell me something isn’t wrong.


  |u/A_Vespertine - 11 hours
  |
  |Or, you know, we selectively breed crops to be better suited for their
  |environment, like we've doing for literally thousands of years.


    |u/HugoCortell - 10 hours
    |
    |No. When the climate changes suddenly, plants will simply die. They
    |can't adapt fast enough, not even with human intervention. This
    |exact thing happened during the Bronze Age collapse.  The only way
    |current crops could have any change of surviving the predicted
    |scenarios for climate change would be genetic editing. Nature is not
    |fast enough this time around, not with such an extreme event on the
    |horizon.


      |u/ItGradAws - 10 hours
      |
      |I’m pretty sure the Bronze Age plebs didn’t have GMO’s


        |u/TactlessTortoise - 10 hours
        |
        |They also didn't have coal plants and oil refineries chugging
        |dino juice to generate enough energy to keep billions of tons of
        |steel moving day and night around the planet 24/7


        |u/HugoCortell - 10 hours
        |
        |That's what I am saying. Because they didn't have that, they
        |experienced severe crop failures that became a major factor in
        |the "systems collapse theory".  That which happened to the
        |civilizations of the Bronze Age could very well happen to us. It
        |might be hard to picture, but our economies are balanced on a
        |needle, and if the boat rocks too much, our systems could
        |collapse too.


          |u/pyrolizard11 - 9 hours
          |
          |I've always thought standing on the shoulders of giants was a
          |better analogy.  We've risen so tall, we can see so far, that
          |we feel as gods to those who came before us, those who planted
          |their feet on the ground to act as our foundation.  But the
          |land beneath us is unchanged and, standing unsure on their
          |shoulders, we face the real possibility of falling back down
          |to their feet.


        |u/PMTittiesPlzAndThx - 9 hours
        |
        |Selective breeding is the original way to genetically modify an
        |organism


        |u/TurtleMOOO - 8 hours
        |
        |Yeah they actually did. GMOs started before then. You don’t need
        |anything other than seeds and a brain to genetically modify
        |plants


    |u/bbysmrf - 10 hours
    |
    |That doesn’t stop the quality decreasing unless you find one that
    |tastes just as good and suited for the new environment.


      |u/A_Vespertine - 10 hours
      |
      |That's how selective breeding works, yes. And on top of that, we
      |have genetic modification.


        |u/postmodest - 10 hours
        |
        |Who will do the science if we've gutted the systems that pursue
        |science in the name of "ignoring the sources of global warming
        |to continue to earn income from them"?


    |u/Psyc3 - 10 hours
    |
    |People never like practical solution to problem on Reddit, that
    |isn't enough doom for them so doesn't fulfil their perception.
    |World beat a pandemic and they learnt nothing about what can be
    |achieved when people have too...or at least the boomers are
    |effected...


      |u/Ianbillmorris - 5 hours
      |
      |We didn't beat a pandemic. The pandemic beat us. If we had won
      |against Covid, then we wouldn't be getting new waves every 6
      |months. Instead, we would have wiped it out.


      |u/A_Vespertine - 9 hours
      |
      |Agreed. I was hesitant to even post a response at all. I know full
      |well Doomers can't be reasoned with. They don't want solutions,
      |because they want to view humanity only as making problems, not
      |solving problems.   But if that was true, none of us would be
      |here. We've made it this far, and for me that's reason enough to
      |believe we can go a ways yet.


  |u/Legitimate_Mud_8295 - 10 hours
  |
  |Couldn't we just grow it elsewhere in formerly colder areas that are
  |now in the right temp range?


    |u/Connect-Ad-5891 - 4 hours
    |
    |I heard that Russia will be a prime benefactor of climate change as
    |the permafrost melts it’ll give them more farmland 


  |u/Spiritual_Support_38 - 5 hours
  |
  |They have money to have a controlled environment for their own
  |produce. Why would they be worried


  |u/BicycleGripDick - 8 hours
  |
  |Headlines schmedlines as global warming uppy makes the not easy to
  |read goodsies


|u/dysthal - 13 hours
|
|--will continue to decline BECAUSE* climate change goes unchecked."
|fixed it.


|u/Electric_Bison - 17 hours
|
|Theres a paywall, but couldn’t this also just be solved by using a
|different strain of rice? SEA/india grows rice too in warmer climates.


  |u/NomadicEngi - 10 hours
  |
  |Yes, but they also have to convince people in Japan and China to buy
  |and cultivate it as well. Rice in SEA and India taste differently from
  |Japanese rice.


|u/soup2nuts - 12 hours
|
|From what I can tell the quality of rice will continue to decline.


  |u/TylerBlozak - 10 hours
  |
  |And brown rice will be more prone than white rice to arsenic
  |contamination, which sucks because it’s leagues better in terms of
  |overall nutrition than its white counterpart.


|u/CaribouHoe - 15 hours
|
|I suggest the book 'The death of grass'


|u/kbean826 - 12 hours
|
|Well. I have some bad news for billions of people.


  |u/ohnofluffy - 7 hours
  |
  |Can you imagine? Looking back and remembering when rice had flavor.


|u/Cactuas - 5 hours
|
|Can anyone with access to the article explain what they mean by
|"quality" of rice? How is it quantified?


|u/seikenhiro - 8 hours
|
|Climate change just bent on ruining everything I love and all I can do
|is watch the clowns running the show do not an iota.


|u/JustPoppinInKay - 17 hours
|
|People will replant from the crops that did well and will eat, process
|or toss from the ones that did not. The rice will continue to be
|engineered to work as our crop. Nothing will change, except for the rice
|that will soon do well in higher night time temps.


  |u/Cranberryoftheorient - 13 hours
  |
  |Seems a little bit of an assumption to me. What if it cant keep up?


    |u/ShootsTowardsDucks - 11 hours
    |
    |If rice can be engineered the way corn has, then it has a big head-
    |start on climate change.


      |u/Xanjis - 11 hours
      |
      |Humanity is not able to reliably predict technological
      |development. The people that sucessfully gambled on if a new
      |technology would succeed or not are incredibly wealthy.


  |u/PatheticPhallusy - 10 hours
  |
  |That is a tremendous and erroneous assumption you are making,
  |presumably without any knowledge of plant physiology or biochemistry.
  |Just take 30 seconds to Google "effect of high temperatures on rice".
  |I found multiple high-impact papers that addressed this, such as [this
  |one](https://ourworldindata.org/will-climate-change-affect-crop-
  |yields-future#:~:text=Studies%20suggest%20that%20yields%20of,a%20world
  |%20without%20climate%20change.) and [this one](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.ni
  |h.gov/articles/PMC454199/#:~:text=Because%20the%20increase%20in%20mean
  |,in%20growing%2Dseason%20mean%20temperature.) which clearly
  |demonstrate how climate change will have substantial negative effects
  |on rice/grain production.  Enzyme kinematics, which is the chemistry
  |of cellular reactions, shows that the enzyme in rice that creates
  |branches of starch drops to 0% activity at 45 degrees Celsius.  No
  |starch, no calories. No calories, people die. Even for hardier grains
  |like sorghum, these principles still apply. There is an upper limit of
  |temperature, where physics prevents us from genetically engineering
  |rice strains capable of *surviving* that temperature. And we're
  |already very, VERY close to it.


  |u/bearbarebere - 13 hours
  |
  |What the hell is with this anti climate change rhetoric??


    |u/Feminizing - 11 hours
    |
    |The bad guys won,.climate change denial/doomism shall be the
    |predominant rhetoric.


    |u/Connect-Ad-5891 - 4 hours
    |
    |This is the new wave of big oil propaganda, “it’s too late to do
    |anything so who cares” and also “we’ll screw renewables, we can do
    |nuclear energy for everything! (No we can’t btw)”


    |u/Ateist - 2 hours
    |
    |Plants were just fine in the dinosaur era that had much higher CO2
    |levels... So Earth will be fine - it is only humans that are
    |screwed.


    |u/zehcoutinho - 11 hours
    |
    |Don’t they acknowledge climate change in the last sentence though?
    |It says rice will adapt to higher temperatures.


      |u/bearbarebere - 11 hours
      |
      |The idea that the climate is changing but that it won’t be that
      |bad, that our crops can adjust just fine, is a form of denial.


        |u/zehcoutinho - 11 hours
        |
        |Since climate change can’t be avoided, isn’t it good to think
        |about the adaptability of crops?


          |u/Feminizing - 10 hours
          |
          |The bad news is unless we take great efforts to avoid the
          |worse of it.. no we all die.  This is it.


          |u/pointless234 - 3 hours
          |
          |Consider it like this, if the crops were so adaptable, why
          |haven't they been adapting to the already rising temperatures?
          |We've standardized our crops so much that they don't change a
          |lot by design


  |u/samarijackfan - 16 hours
  |
  |This is what I learned from the 70s scaring the world we were going to
  |run out of grain to feed the world. Oh look, we engineeredcorn to grow
  |on less land and made rice 4 times better than previous crops.


    |u/Tearakan - 14 hours
    |
    |Except we are in a situation that is vastly different from previous
    |famine scares.  Our species has literally never seen this level of
    |CO2 in the atmosphere.  Last time it was this high the ice caps
    |didn't exist and we literally weren't alive.  Heat is rising rapidly
    |in our most productive growing regions every year.  Eventually it
    |will rise past the limit that a lot of usable plants can handle.
    |Hell India's heat wave this summer nearly got to the temperature
    |that kills wheat crop in the fields.  That was this year.  And
    |bioengineering has limits too.  Each species has limits that can't
    |just be "engineered away".


      |u/runtheplacered - 14 hours
      |
      |Serious question, is this normal for this sub?  It seems pretty
      |clear they're denying climate change in a science subreddit of all
      |places.  I did not expect that.


        |u/Tearakan - 13 hours
        |
        |Normally no.  I don't normally see those kinds of dumb comments
        |but I am very quickly losing any faith I had left in people.  At
        |this point I see very violent collapse as invetible and just
        |hope enough people survive to build something cool in the
        |aftermath.


          |u/runtheplacered - 13 hours
          |
          |> At this point I see very violent collapse as invetible and
          |just hope enough people survive to build something cool in the
          |aftermath.  I see we've landed at the exact same spot.


            |u/Tearakan - 11 hours
            |
            |Yeah.  I tried to hold out hope for a soft landing fpr
            |climate change.  Now I think only extreme pain for our
            |entire species stands a chance at waking people up.


        |u/Buzz_Killington_III - 9 hours
        |
        |I think people assume that human's will be able to adapt.  And
        |we will, we're extremely adaptable.  But many animals and crops
        |won't, and I think people over-estimate our capability to keep
        |enough food for a growing population under those circumstances.
        |Unfortunately, I don't see that changing until we are seeing
        |real, tangible, catastrophic impacts.


        |u/Connect-Ad-5891 - 4 hours
        |
        |I got here from all so it’s probably normies browsing and seeing
        |the post 


      |u/esaks - 13 hours
      |
      |Eh, the earth will be fine. Humans had a good run.


        |u/Tearakan - 13 hours
        |
        |Well yeah.  I never said we are wiping out all life.  Just ours.


          |u/shadar - 13 hours
          |
          |And millions of other species along the way.


            |u/Tearakan - 11 hours
            |
            |True.  They will join the 99 percent of all species that
            |have gone extinct.


            |u/BeniaminGrzybkowski - 11 hours
            |
            |Species come and go, it's only natural


              |u/Xanjis - 11 hours
              |
              |Humanity was already competitive with an asteroid strike
              |or the great oxygen event *before* climate change.


              |u/shadar - 10 hours
              |
              |https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-prisms-
              |extinction/article/forty-years-later-the-status-of-the-
              |big-five-mass-extinctions/S2755095822000043_figAb.png
              |What's happening is anything but natural.


        |u/Talmirion - 7 hours
        |
        |Humans will survive, with how adaptive we are. Civilization? Not
        |so sure.


    |u/Televisions_Frank - 15 hours
    |
    |I'm sure Just-In-Time staple crop engineering won't fail eventually!


      |u/Givemeurhats - 15 hours
      |
      |It's more like the solutions are there but aren't implemented
      |until necessary. Whether that's due to time, cost, politics, or
      |whatever is up for debate.


    |u/DanoPinyon - 14 hours
    |
    |...and we overapplied nitrogen and pumped groundwater. Will it go on
    |forever? No!


    |u/pbmcc88 - 13 hours
    |
    |Would we have run out of grain had those modifications not happened?


|u/war3rd - 8 hours
|
|Bilderburg specifically promoted 2 billion people on the planet. There
|are 8 billion now. Do the math.


|u/agprincess - 8 hours
|
|I won't pay that price to read it, but wouldn't they just eventually
|switch to rice strains that are more tolerant to warmer weather? Doesn't
|half of the worlds rice come much warmer countries like India?


|u/TheOptionalHuman - 7 hours
|
|Addressing climate change might inconvenience some billionaires and
|enrage their supporters in trailer parks throughout America. Our
|incoming "administration" will never tolerate that.   (/s but is it
|really?)


|u/Mindless-Day2007 - 5 hours
|
|With sea level rise we will see lot of farming land turn into wasteland
|and rice production will suffer. Farmers will have to adapt and move
|from raise to whatever can adapt to new climate, for example they will
|do fish and shrimp farming instead.


|u/Sunny_McSunset - 2 hours
|
|Western politicians seeing this like, "okay, so if we just continue
|climate change a little longer, we can make our competitors food supply
|chains break down, and then they'll have to import grains from us? Count
|me in!" 


|u/Western-Monitor2957 - 40 minutes
|
|Its not only rice but all kind of food items .....everything becoming
|unhealthy...fruits vegetables and sausages everything ...


|u/no-mad - 13 hours
|
|Rice is a major world crop any percentage drop in production is a huge
|loss of food. Rice is not the only crop to be affected by increased day
|and night temps. We will breed better adapted plants, lose some foods
|and adopt different foods better suited to the heat.


|u/RationalKate - 11 hours
|
|Hey lets just collect um all while we are here, Pasta, Bread, Tortillas,
|Dumplings, Nana, and any other


|u/Taronar - 8 hours
|
|HAHAHAH we're so fucked, the carbon cycle is a 50 year cycle, the
|affects we are feeling now are caused by the pollution in 1975.  We need
|to make a change YESTERDAY.


|u/ExtensionThin635 - 15 hours
|
|Doesn’t matter people won’t change until they have literally no other
|alternative. Let em roast.


  |u/soup2nuts - 12 hours
  |
  |*Us*. Let *us* roast.


    |u/swords-and-boreds - 7 hours
    |
    |Some people knew about this and still had kids. Suckerrrrs!


|u/bust-the-shorts - 6 hours
|
|Maybe china should do something about this.  It’s their problem


|u/Alienhaslanded - 5 hours
|
|Bye-bye rice. You will be missed.


|u/therealjerrystaute - 14 hours
|
|Commercial/industrial scale farming is going to move indoors,
|underground, and underwater (aquaculture), where the environment will be
|much better controlled, and stuff like pesticide use will be rare.
|Micro-scale farming is going to blossom in households for certain
|fruits, veggies, and spices. These processes will be gradual, until
|climate change forces them to accelerate.


|u/MrPejorative - 13 hours
|
|Rice is not good for the environment anyway.
|https://www.weforum.org/stories/2019/06/how-rice-is-hurting-the-planet/


|u/DreiKatzenVater - 17 hours
|
|What if they… dum dum duuuuum …grow it somewhere else


  |u/boomer478 - 15 hours
  |
  |You do realise that there isn't a "somewhere else" that isn't
  |experiencing climate change, right?


  |u/bkupron - 15 hours
  |
  |Yes. The artic tundra is thawing. Smashing idea. Now where are we
  |going to live to escape the giant hurricanes and tornados?


  |u/Primedirector3 - 16 hours
  |
  |And fight climate change at the same time


  |u/Xanjis - 11 hours
  |
  |Which part of the budget are you proposing we slash to pay for that?


  |u/Mindless-Day2007 - 5 hours
  |
  |Somewhere else is another nation land which likely they wouldn’t
  |agree.


  |u/londons_explorer - 16 hours
  |
  |Or grow something else that prefers less rain and higher
  |temperatures...   Like wheat!


|u/coffeeguyq8 - 10 hours
|
|Science sometimes is stupid


|u/Piper6728 - 13 hours
|
|Or, quite possibly, farming will move indoors or underground in climate
|controlled areas


  |u/Xanjis - 11 hours
  |
  |Yearly income for billions of people: less then $5000   Yearly cost of
  |a person to live needing underground-grown food and powerful AC:
  |$6,000