6 Minute English / Should we eat less rice?

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I m Neil.

And I m Beth. Neil, what type of foods do you often eat?

Well, basic things that fill me up that's sort of bread, potatoes.

Well, food like this, which is regularly eaten by many people, is known as a staple. In Britain, bread is a popular staple, but for large parts of the world there s another food which is number one: rice.

That s right. Over half the world s population eats rice as the staple food, especially in Asia. But rice is a very thirsty crop which needs lots of water to grow, and this is becoming a problem because of droughts and flooding caused by climate change.

In this programme, we ll be hearing about a pioneering new technique helping farmers to grow rice in the face of a changing climate. As usual, we ll be learning some useful new words and phrases, and remember you can find all the vocabulary from this programme on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.

But first I have a question for you, Beth. Just now I mentioned that rice is a very thirsty crop so how much water is needed to grow one kilogram of rice? Is it:

a) 1,000 to 3,000 litres?b) 3,000 to 5,000 litres? or,c) 5,000 to 7,000 litres?

I'm going to say c) 5,000 to 7,000 litres.