A field in which rice is grown is called a what?

A field in which rice is grown is called a paddy. The fuller term is paddy field, referring to a usually flooded parcel of farmland designed for rice and other semiaquatic crops.

Paddy cultivation depends on carefully managed water. Farmers build raised banks around fields to retain irrigation or rainwater, and many paddies are arranged as terraces on hillsides. Flooding suppresses weeds and provides a reliable water supply, although rice itself can also grow in non-flooded upland conditions.

The word paddy comes from the Malay word padi, meaning rice plant or unhusked rice. Wet-field rice agriculture developed thousands of years ago in southern China and later spread across Asia and beyond. Famous examples include the Banaue Rice Terraces in the Philippines and the rice fields of Japan, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

A common mix-up is treating “paddy” as the name of the plant itself. In English, it most often describes the field or rice still in its husk, while milled rice is the processed grain sold for cooking.