My wife is Japanese and will only eat Japanese or US rice - the rice from India tends to be long-grain rice which is thinner and longer then the Japanese variants.
I’m fine with all of it, but I haven’t seen the “panic” buying at the places we go ... as of yet.
Reed, just about every basamati rice I have had has a burlap taste and smell, which makes sense since its probably spent a year or two in a burlap bag in transit and storage. Also, after the things that I have read about the water in which its grown in India makes me look for American grown rice, either from the South or California.
https://www.circleofblue.org/2018/india/toxic-water-toxic-crops-indias-public-health-time-bomb/
To irrigate their crops, in this case rice, farmers near Muzaffarnagar pump putrid water from a nearby canal contaminated with raw sewage, industrial chemicals, and heavy metals. The contaminants are finding their way into India’s food supply. Photo © Jennifer Möller-Gulland
U.S. Rice only, thanks! (Food and Water slide over.)