breadbasket

The breadbasket of a country or of a region is an area which, because of the richness of the soil and/or advantageous climate, produces large quantities of wheat or other grain. Rice bowl is a similar term used to refer to Southeast Asia; California's Salinas Valley is sometimes referred to as America's salad bowl. Such regions may be the subject of fierce political disputes, which may even escalate into full military conflicts.

Breadbaskets have become important within the global food system by concentrating global food-production in a small number of countries and, in countries such as India, in small geographic regions. As climate change increases weather variability around the world, the likelihood of multiple breadbaskets failing at a time increases dramatically. The 2022 food crises has been in part facilitated by a series of failures in key breadbasket regions, and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has created significant potential disruption of the respective breadbasket regions that are important for global wheat and oil seed production.