Rice is the staple food of the people of Bangladesh, and rice comes from paddy. Producing paddy, our main food grain, takes a great deal of water.

Do you know how many litres of water it takes to produce a kilo of paddy? Search on Google and you will find 3,500 litres in one place, 1,200 litres in another and 1,600 litres in a third.

Some recent research has found that about 650 litres of water are needed in Bangladesh. One kilo of paddy yields roughly 660 grams of rice, and a Bengali eats around 400 grams of rice a day on average.

So producing the rice one person eats in a day and a half takes 650 litres of water, and fresh water at that. It is thought that a third world war will be fought over water, over its distribution and the inequality in it.

Water is not the only thing paddy needs. It also takes seed, fertiliser and pesticide, as well as the farmer's labour. Only after all of that does this food reach our table.

Yet many of us waste food. We throw it away if we do not like it, or pile our plates without thinking how much we can eat, and then let it go to waste.

So we should stop wasting rice. Please do not waste food: 650 litres of water are used just to get 660 grams of rice.

Many people in the world still go without food, and some eat only once or half a meal a day. Think of them for a moment, and stop wasting food.

The writer, Md Rezwan Hossain, is a freelance journalist.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.