Michael McEwen, age 9, of Phoenix, Arizona, for his question:

Can we grow rice in the United States?

Every year, the United States harvests about 4 1/2 million tons of rice. We eat up about twice this much rice, so the rest is imported from other countries. The people of Asia grow almost 100 times as much rice as we do    and they have very little to spare. To them, rice is just as important as corn and wheat cereals are to us. Some of these people eat 400 pounds of rice a year, while most of us eat only about seven pounds. Rice likes to grow in warm, wet places. The young plants sprout ankle deep in muddy water. In warm Eastern countries rice grows in flooded valleys and river deltas. Young crops growing on hilly slopes must be drenched with water.

In most of the United States, the summers are too short and dry for rice growing. But some places around the Gulf of Mexico are just right, with plenty of swampy water for the young plants. Rice crops in drier parts of the Southwest are flooded with irrigation water. Our rice crops grow in parts of Texas and Louisiana, Arkansas and California.