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Comment by thePhytochemist | Hacker News Reader

Interesting topic, but the agronomy/plant science assumption that the article is based on is lacking.

Rice doesn't require complex irrigation - dryland rice farming is common. Rice and wheat both give more yield when irrigated properly using complex irrigation systems. I don't see any reason to claim that growing wheat is just generally easier than growing rice.

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The authors have published this theory in Science, and this one is in Nature Communications. Probably any criticism we can come up with was provided during the review process.

I'm also unconvinced, but it is very difficult to criticize this theory fairly and from the internet at the moment.

Peer review does not critique the plausibility of hypothesis, just the structure and quality of the paper's argument. At best, reviewers might say that the section on alternative explanations might be lacking.

That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, the acceptability of the hypothesis in the current paradigm is central.

You can make any and all kinds of criticisms in peer review.

Sure, but gatekeeping ideas you disagree with is not the purpose of peer review, and distorts its true purpose of ensuring the research and it's presentation passes some minimal quality threshold such that the community can understand and debate it.

According to Braudel (in Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, vol. 1), without irrigation rice farming depletes the soil much, much more than wheat. If I remember correctly, he states that if one waits for natural soil regeneration (fallowing and/or crop rotation) wheat can be grown at the same place every 2 to 3 years, whereas for rice it is only every 10 to 30 years.

Comparatively, with irrigation and good weather you could harvest rice usually 3 and up to 4 times a year in south of India.

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