Nice Rice: the first sustainable rice brand

Last year I wrote about the out-sized carbon footprint of rice, which accounts for almost a quarter of all greenhouse gases from global food production. Half the world eats rice every day and so that’s perhaps not surprising, but there’s no question that it’s much more damaging to the climate than other staple grain crops.

You can look up my previous article to read up on why that is. You can also see previous posts for the detail on the primary solution, which is an alternative growing technique called sustainable rice intensification, or SRI. It bucks the conventional wisdom of growing rice in flooded paddies and uses a fraction of the water, increasing yields while halving emissions. Developed in Madagascar and then honed by agronomists from the USA, it’s used by more farmers every year across the rice-growing world.

So far that’s not been something that consumers have been able to support. We know to look out for sustainable palm oil when shopping, or Rainforest Alliance products, or sustainably caught fish. There hasn’t been an equivalent for rice, but first out of that particular gate is the UK brand Nice Rice.

Nice Rice was founded specifically to drive awareness and sales of sustainable rice, and they source their rice from a grower’s group in India that only uses SRI methods. The brand was founded in 2023 by Fergus O’Sullivan and scored its first big customer in Waitrose, the most bijoux of British supermarkets. You can now buy Nice Rice in Waitrose branches around the country, as basic basmati or a selection of flavoured pre-cooked options. As a bonus, a small share of profits goes to training more farmers to use SRI.

Yes, Nice Rice is more expensive than some other brands of basmati rice you can find in the supermarket, but it’s the first to do this and doesn’t have the economies of scale. And yes, not everyone can shop at Waitrose. We don’t have one in Luton, and I’d need to visit our posh neighbours in Hitchin or Harpenden to get my hands on some Nice Rice. (If you have a Waitrose, you can buy me some for Christmas for I am easily pleased.)

As we’ve seen with Fairtrade and organic certification, ethical alternatives often enter the market at higher price points. I hope that Nice Rice can prompt a broader move towards sustainable rice and that will bring prices down. They’ve already had an impact. Their launch this year has prompted more discussion of sustainable rice farming than I’ve ever seen in the UK. Perhaps a kitemark might be a next step, allowing more farmers to certify their growing techniques and increasing consumer recognition. And maybe, one day, so much rice will be grown sustainably that we won’t need to ask any more.