Despite being Europe’s number one rice-eating country, Portugal has still managed to get itself into a paddy-field of a predicament. The country where almost every traditional dish comes with rice on the side – if not slap in the middle – has found itself at the thin end of what can only be described as a modern-day Rice Wars.
As has happened throughout history, it all began with invaders from Spain…
Público newspaper explains that until the Spanish rice giant Mundiarroz (of the brand Cigala) set its sights on the Portuguese market, national rice aficionados – of whom there are hundreds of thousands – were more than happy with the country’s traditional “arroz carolino”.
But Spain’s finer “arroz agulha” has been cleverly marketed, and before rice growers were able to say “Basmati!” (or even look the variety up …) they had stiff competition on their hands.
Now, the country has a veritable carolino rice mountain – with 50,000 tons of the stuff in storage, which amounts to half the amount the country could comfortably consume in a year, says Público.
Luckily, exportation has come to the rescue. Last week, a ship loaded with 15,000 tons of carolino rice still in its husks set off for Turkey in an operation that combined the produce of three rice giants in the national sector – Novarroz, Valente Marques and Orivárzea.
But what does the future hold? Can Portugal ever get over this “embarRICEment”, and return to properly satisfying the national market?
The solution is simple, an inventive Pedro Monteiro of the association of national rice industries (ANIA) told Público: “We need to get more people eating carolino rice!”
He then went on to say that another solution was not to plant so much of it…
Undaunted by such ambivalence, the quaintly-named “House of Rice” (Casa do Arroz) tells Público that it is to embark on “an awareness campaign” – to the tune of €2 million – to “explain to the large consumer that carolino rice has advantages”.
For example, Orivárzea’s president António Madaleno says it would be “an aberration” to eat anything but carolino rice with ‘grelos’ (turnip greens), or with ‘cabidela’ (a traditional dish of free-range chicken cooked in its own blood).
Apparently unaware that this kind of campaign could possibly backfire and send everyone off in a completely non-rice-driven direction, Orivárzea are fortunately maintaining their export plan for the future, and including Macau, Hong Kong, Brazil, Switzerland and Poland on the ‘needs-must’ carolino rice route.
“It’s an important solution,” the president agreed.
