Rice

Nickerie is Suriname’s granary – rice, the basis of the country’s everyday cooking, grows on vast polders reclaimed from swamps.

Rice is an annual cereal grass with panicle inflorescences whose grains have fed half of humanity for thousands of years. It grows best in flooded fields, where a layer of water protects it from weeds. In Suriname it is grown on the low-lying clay polders of the coast, irrigated by networks of canals, and large farms use machinery and even aircraft for sowing. Rice is the basis of many dishes in Surinamese cooking, which blends Indian, Javanese, African and Chinese influences.

Significance in the country

Rice growing in Suriname was developed by contract labourers who arrived from India and Java in the 19th and 20th centuries; today rice is one of the country’s main agricultural and export products, and the Nickerie district is its centre.

Where it grows

On the polders of the coastal belt, above all in the Nickerie district in the west of the country, and less so in Coronie, Saramacca, Wanica and Commewijne.

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