It’s been a week since the Daily Kos Free Rice Team started, and we’ve earned a little over a quarter of a million grains! That averages to about 35 thousand a day. Since it takes a little over 19 thousand grains a day to feed an adult, we’re feeding about 1.8 adults a day.
Currently the rice earned on Freerice.com goes to children in Cambodia. Up till June of this year, the aid was going to Haiti. I wondered why they don’t send rice to East Africa since there is a famine going on there now. The site explains that they are not able to allocate to the Horn of Africa -- Freerice rice is purchased locally, and at this stage it isn't possible. They are taking monetary donations for that area. I made a donation, and went back to play and scored 2000 grains.
Later I did some searches to find out more about rice and the East African famine. Other than one half semester in 8th grade, I have never studied geography, so I am not very familiar with the climate and economic situation in East Africa. I wasn’t even particularly aware of where East Africa was (to the east, duh!) and pulled up this nice map of Africa to get a better idea of what was where.
I learned that the area most affected by the drought was referred to as The Horn of Africa which consists of Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea, and Djibouti. This area is more susceptible to droughts because the tropical monsoons blow from the west and lose most of their moisture by the time they reach East Africa.
Rice is well suited to areas that have ample rainfall. Most of the rice consumed in Africa is imported from Asia, at great cost. To bridge the growing gap between consumption and production, Africa spends about US $1.5 billion annually on rice imports.
The African Rice Center, an African agricultural research center has developed New Rice For Africa (NERICA), an interspecific cultivar of the hardier African rice, Oryza glaberrima and the higher-yield Asian varieties of Oryza sativa to improve the yield of African rice varieties. Ultimately this new breed of rice should reduce the dependence on Asian imports, but it is still short of meeting the needs of Africa. I assume that the yields are going to have to be a lot higher before they can make the rice available to Freerice.com.
Now that I’ve shared my newly acquired knowledge about rice with you, I think I’ll go play a few games in the category of geography. Since I know where Somalia is now, I might score a few more grains.
To find out more about the Daily Kos Free Rice Team, take a look at my diary about it from last week:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
or just go to
Main page:
www.freerice.com
go to Groups and search for Daily Kos.
http://freerice.com/...