There’s no way in this world, or any other world for that matter, rice would be used as livestock feed. It’s too expensive and takes way too much resources for it to even be considered livestock feed. People used to bulk out the rice with sweet potatoes and chestnuts, because it was so expensive.
@HDMI1 Unless most of that country is made up of swamps and wetlands that rice can literally grow like weeds (which itself raises another issue of finding other non-waterlogged areas to raise livestock and grow other crops), it’s not really feasible for rice to be so common it’s considered disposable. It takes way too much water and manpower to raise.
@HDMI1 What do you mean wheat and rice swapped accessibility? That would make rice even more rare. Wheat is pretty much the most difficult grain to grow in real life before modern farming techniques.
Oats are sometimes used as livestock feed but even then it would just be over winter. The rest of the time you'd let horses graze. And oats were still a common food for peasants. So if it was rice and oat swapping roles, it would still be weird for a grain to be seen as primarily animal feed.
people complaining about rice growth and cultivation when the author could simply just write off rice as something of a weed class plant that could grow abundantly everywhere... do know that all plants that are consumed now irl were also once considered weeds until discovered as actual food... don't assume things based on how they grow irl unless the author specifically detailed it...