North American Rice

I have read that some native Americans around the Great Lakes supplemented their diet by collecting a kind of wild rice that grows along lakes and streams and in other wetlands. As far as I know, this kind of rice was never domesticated and never became a major food source, either for the Native Americans or for white settlers who displaced them.

What if this rice was of a different species, one that was more productive and more amenable to being domesticated?
 
Well, there are so many different types of rice that there is still no good indication that this particular will see any widespread use today. One could see it being used at fancier gourmet restaurants as a wild rice side dish or something, but for the most part the most typical rice we eat to day is very similar to that from the local Chinese restaurant.

Also theres no indication that the Native Indians wouldn't have just harvest the rice for feed for livestock, probably only consumed during really bad months.
 
Also theres no indication that the Native Indians wouldn't have just harvest the rice for feed for livestock, probably only consumed during really bad months.

What livestock?

Surely if people in southern Asia could learn to grow rice intensively as a food crop, people in North America could at least theoretically do the same - if the plant was suitable for widespread domestication as a crop.
 
Top