The sound is unmistakable: a pot lid rattling gently as steam pushes its way out. In many homes, that sound means dinner is not far off. It’s a rhythm that wasn’t part of earlier generations, but today it signals a food that has quietly embedded itself in daily life — rice.
Rice hasn’t always been central to PNG’s diet.
Early colonial records show attempts to introduce rice cultivation as far back as the 1890s, with small plots in Rabaul and Morobe. After Independence, different governments partnered with donors, agricultural missions and Asian development agencies to trial varieties across the country. The most ambitious program in the 1970s saw demonstration farms established in Oro, Morobe and East Sepik, and for a brief period PNG produced modest quantities of its own rice. But inconsistent funding, changing political priorities and the absence of long-term milling infrastructure meant those efforts gradually faded. What remained was the taste for the grain itself — imported, affordable, and quickly woven into the national diet.
Why Rice Became the Practical Choice
In households today, rice fills a very specific role. It is not a ceremonial food or a crop with ancestral stories attached to it. It is the food that makes modern life easier. It cooks quickly, works with almost anything in the pot, and stretches a small portion of meat or tinned fish to feed a large family. It doesn’t spoil easily, doesn’t depend on garden land, and doesn’t change with the seasons. For households balancing work, school, rising costs and limited time, rice has become the practical answer.
Urbanisation accelerated this shift. As people moved into towns and informal settlements, access to gardens declined. Subsistence farming — once the backbone of food security — was replaced by reliance on trade stores. Even in rural areas, environmental shocks such as droughts and frost events pushed families toward food items that could be stored long-term. Rice became the fallback food during hard times and, eventually, the everyday food even in good times.
The Challenge of Dependence and the Case for Local Production
Domestic production, however, never caught up with demand. Rice projects arrived with great enthusiasm and left quietly when funding ran dry. Farmers proved repeatedly that upland rice varieties could grow well in Morobe, Bougainville, Madang, Central Province and East Sepik, but production rarely moved beyond pilot scale. Imported rice remained cheaper and more consistent than anything produced locally, reinforcing dependence on foreign supply.
This dependence carries a cost. PNG imports over 300,000 tonnes of rice every year, drawing heavily on foreign exchange reserves. When international prices rise or when shipping routes are disrupted, the impact is felt instantly by families. A small increase in the price of a 10-kg bag can push already stretched households into difficult decisions.
Yet rice cultivation deserves another look — not as a grand national industry overnight, but as a practical food-security crop for communities. Where farmers have received training, seed support and access to milling, upland rice has performed strongly. Women, in particular, see rice as a crop that supports both family nutrition and small income streams.
Rice is now part of who we are as eaters. The question ahead is whether the country will continue relying entirely on imports, or whether it will finally build the consistency, infrastructure and policy needed to grow more of what it consumes.
