India is also the second largest producer of rice in the world, after China.
As the world continually becomes more industrialized, people sometimes rely more heavily on processed foods and forget where their food originally came from, which are farms and gardens, most likely. The problem is actually highly relevant to the ecology that I study in the lab because plummeting insect populations, and the decline of wildlife in general, is connected to a lack of agricultural understanding in the general public. Recent articles in Nature and the New York Times (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08974-9, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html) are filled with alarming statistics such as the 75% drop in flying insects in Germany within the past three decades, and a 55% decline in certain bee and hoverfly species in areas of Great Britain. People are replacing wild insect habitats with concrete jungles and are planting nonnative crops that are not well-suited to a particular region, thus disrupting the local ecosystems. This happens in India as well! People grow rice in the state of Punjab, which is the third largest producer of rice in the country, even though it is a hot and arid region that is not well-suited to growing rice. This leads to water wastage and a host of other problems that deplete regions of their natural resources.
My message to you is to try to learn where your food comes from! Plant a garden with native plants if you can, and enjoy delicious local meals.
