"Throughout its history, the cultivation, trade, and consumption of rice has affected vast parts of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. In China rice started to be cultivated more than 10,000 years ago; it was also domesticate very early in South and Southeast Asia, where its cultivation spread widely through antiquity. It was grown in Europe by the tenth century CE and was introduced to the Americas in the early sixteenth century as part of the so-called . By the precolonial period, rice cultivation was widespread in West Africa. Italians like their ' and the Japanese their ; is famous for its coconut rice with beans; and any Indian meal is incomplete without rice."