PC: more widespread rice cultivation in Europe

Is it plausible to give us Asian-level population densities in Europe, as a result of much more widespread rice cultivation? IOTL, rice is grown in the Po River Valley and the Spanish Levant. Can we see rice becoming the predominant staple food of Italy and the Iberian peninsula, causing Asian-style population densities (e.g. 120 million in Italy, 100 million in Iberia, etc)? What about rice growing in the Rhine Valley? Rice is already grown IOTL in northeastern China and northern Japan with subarctic climates, so could it work in Germany? Admittedly, most of Europe will only be able to sustain one rice crop a year instead of two or even three in say Thailand or Vietnam.
 
Is it plausible to give us Asian-level population densities in Europe, as a result of much more widespread rice cultivation? IOTL, rice is grown in the Po River Valley and the Spanish Levant. Can we see rice becoming the predominant staple food of Italy and the Iberian peninsula, causing Asian-style population densities (e.g. 120 million in Italy, 100 million in Iberia, etc)? What about rice growing in the Rhine Valley? Rice is already grown IOTL in northeastern China and northern Japan with subarctic climates, so could it work in Germany? Admittedly, most of Europe will only be able to sustain one rice crop a year instead of two or even three in say Thailand or Vietnam.

You'd need quite a different climate to expand cultivation of rice in Italy. The Chinese do cultivate rice without problems even on terraced hills, but they also do receive monsoon precipitation. We have regular drought in summer in the Mediterranean... And sometimes also in other seasons. Rice in the Po valley flourishes only because of canals and careful irrigation works, it's mostly a recent development due to work made in the 19th century by the Sardinian-Piedomntese kingdom. In some provinces (Vercelli, Novara, Biella, Pavia west of the Ticino river) rice is still king. But we also still have the Alps and their surviving glaciers up there for watering in the dry months.
 
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