Doing business in Asia, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Russia.

In Niigata we have koshi hikari rice. It is famous throughout Japan and even in some parts of the world. I can even find it at the supermarket here on the west coast of the US.

So, what are the top 10 rice-producing countries in the world. I was quite surprised at Japan's ranking and interested to see that nine of the top 10 are in Asia.

10. Japan - 1.9% of the total rice production

 9. Brazil - 2.2%

 8. Philippines - 2.3%  I don't remember rice being that popular when I was there.

 7. Myanmar - 3.8%

 6. Thailand - 4.1%  We bought a 10 kilo bag of Thai rice at the local Ranch 99. When it was gone, that was it. Back to the Japanese rice.

 5. Vietnam - 5.8%

 4. Bangladesh - 6.2%

 3. Indonesia - 8.7%

 2. India - 20.4%  This suprised me. I ate rice when I was in India but didn't know that India helped feed the world. Well, maybe they just feed themselves.

 1. China - 30.7%  China needs to produce that much rice just to feed their own.

Okay, call me partial, but so far, nobody grows rice like the Japanese. And nobody but nobody can make rice like koshi hikari. Or is it because that's what I am used to.

What do you think?

Oh...the U.S. was number 11