Rice is Life at Lotus Foods

Lotus Foods LogoLotus Foods believes that by pursuing smart product innovation, better growing practices, and delicious whole grain heirloom rice varieties, we’ll lessen our environmental impact, improve nutrition for our consumers and create more social and economic justice for small farmers.

About Lotus Foods

In 2008, Lotus Foods committed to partnering with small-scale farmers who radically changed how they grow rice, using less to produce more. With a set of practices that they call More Crop Per Drop™ farmers can double and even triple their yields using up to 50% less water on average and 80-90% less seed. In 2016, they became a fully certified B Corp or Benefit Corporation. B corporations are legally obligated to consider the impact of their decisions on their employees, suppliers, community, consumers, and environment. It’s the Lotus Foods’ conviction that they can change the world for the better by how they conduct their business, and we at Harvest Market think that’s just awesome!

What’s in Store at Harvest Market?

  • Organic Jade Pearl Rice
  • Heirloom Forbidden Rice
  • Single Serve Rice Ramen Packets with Miso Soup:Lotus Foods Rice Ramen
    • Millet and Brown Rice
    • Forbidden Rice
    • Jade Pearl Rice
  • 4 pack of Rice Ramen:
    • Millet and Brown Rice
    • Forbidden Rice
    • Jade Pearl Rice
  • Heat and Eat Bowls:
    • Forbidden Rice
    • Volcano Rice
    • Jasmine Rice

Click here to put these products to good use with creative recipe ideas from Lotus Foods!

Rice is Life!

This modest little grain is super important. It starts out looking like a blade of grass. Yet, it provides half the world’s population (over 3.5 billion people!) with 60-70% of their daily calories. And rice is the main source of livelihood for over 2 billion people living in low-income countries.

Growing Rice

Let’s Do the Rice Thing

However, rice production takes a toll on humans and the environment. Annually it consumes one-quarter to one-third of our planet’s annual renewable fresh water. Hundreds of millions of women must do back-breaking, repetitive tasks in unhygienic conditions of standing water. Flooded rice fields contribute to global warming by emitting methane gas, which is approximately 30X more potent as a heat trapping gas than CO2.

Because of this, Lotus Foods supports More Crop Per Drop – a smart agricultural practice that protects and restores natural resources, improves incomes and quality of life for farmers, especially women, and reduces climate impact. All rice produced by farmers practicing More Crop Per Drop™ is USDA certified organic.  Together we can all “Do the Rice Thing.”

What is More Crop Per Drop™?

SRI Rice ComparisonWhat Lotus Foods defines as More Crop Per Drop™ is an organic version of a growing process called “System of Rice Intensification.” (SRI). SRI was developed to improve rice yields of low-income farmers to alleviate poverty and improve food security. Promoted by development agencies such as Oxfam, Africare and WWF, SRI does not require specialized seeds, chemicals or inputs. All it requires is a willingness to cultivate rice in a different way, to optimize the plants’ growing conditions.

The key tenets of SRI are to plant smaller, younger seedlings to reduce transplant shock, to plant them at wider spacing in rows (rather than randomly in clumps) to minimize competition and facilitate weeding, and to keep soils moist but not continuously flooded to promote soil health.

SRI practices result in:

  • Less work and disease risk for women due to fewer and lighter seedlings to manage, upright weeding, and no work in standing water
  • More water available for other crops, ecosystems and communities

Meet some of the rice farmers and learn more about SRI on the Lotus Foods website.