By Simbo Olorunfemi

“We would never have a food crisis; we would only have a palate crisis. This means we have to change
our taste. For people who like to eat foreign rice, they have to adapt and adjust to local rice.”
– Ade Adefeko

Nigeria is a paradox, wrapped in multiple layers of paradox. She exports what she needs and imports what she does not need. What she has, she often does not appreciate, and what she does not need, she desperately desires to have. Nothing best sums up the paradox than Nigeria’s unbreakable love affair with rice. Whereas rice, according to experts, is indigenous to Nigeria, having been cultivated for over 3,500 years, with the cultivation of improved rice varieties (O. sativa L.) traced as far back as 1890. With urbanisation and the colonisation of our appetite, Nigerians will move to fully embracing parboiled rice by the 1990s that will make the days of Nigeria’s self-sufficiency during the 1960s a distant memory.