Rice Consumption in South America

How many kilograms of rice do people in South America eat every year?

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Rice is a common staple food in most Asian countries. Not very surprisingly, Asian countries dominate the top of the per capita rice consumption. But there are also several South American countries that consume a large amount of rice per capita.

As we can see on this map, there seems to be a clear north-south pattern, where the rice consumption increases as one goes further north in South America. Does this (like in Asia) mean that the countries that consume less rice, consume more potatoes? No, not necessarily. Potato consumption in South America is quite high in most countries. Although Peru and Colombia have a high rice consumption, they consume even more potatoes.

By far the biggest consumers per capita in South America are Guyana (114.9 kg) and Suriname (103.6 kg). Colombia, Ecuador and Peru also have a fairly high rice consumption.

The lowest numbers can be found in the southern part of South America. Paraguay has the lowest consumption (4.5 kg), followed by Argentina (11.8 kg) and Chile (13.3 kg). Although these numbers are the lowest in South America, they are still higher than most of Europe.

Curious about the rice consumption in other continents? Have a look at these other maps of Asia and Europe that I’ve made before.

The data for this map comes from the FAO. The data includes any product made of rice, including rice noodles, sake, rice starch, rice flour and other products made of rice. The amount of rice in the dataset concerns the raw (uncooked) weight.