Day 70: Semerang and Bali : Indonesia - The Art Of Rice

Rice has always been something I've taken for granted. It's that white (or brown) stuff you see in your bowl at Asian Restaurants. But how is rice farmed? Well, we both had the opportunity to witness this love the past few days. So here is how rice goes from farm to table in Indonesia—specifically in Bali and Java. 

We'll also take a quick look at some temples, which have nothing to do with growing rice. Except, the gods may or may not make the land fertile and cause the rivers to flood. 

Here is the Balinese version, which is different from the classic method. The mountain lakes, the gentle climate, and the volcano-enriched soils of Bali are ideally suited for rice growing (Oryza sativa). Although some of the islands’ rice-farming land is being converted to other uses, terraced rice fields are still the dominant feature of the rural landscape, and the cult and cultivation of rice remain much as they were in Neolithic times. The Steep terrain makes mechanization difficult and poses a particular problem for “wet rice farming” – water flows far below the arable land in deep river gorges. The Balinese solution dates from as early as the 9th century AD and is an ingenious and complex network of irrigation channels, tunnels, and aqueducts that divert water from sources high up in the mountains to water-sharing communities known as subak. The process is as follows:

1. Rice seed is planted in a protected bed. While the seedlings mature, farmers prepare the fields.

2. The planting basin is prepared by flooding, plowing, and leveling the field.

3. Seedlings are transplanted into flooded fields by hand. As the plants mature, the fields are alternately flooded and dried at specific stages to maximize growth, and they are periodically weeded.

4. Women harvest the stalks, concealing the knife in their palms to avoid frightening the rice goddess.

5. High-yield rice varieties are threshed directly in the fields and put in bags to be taken to a rice mill. Older strains of rice are kept on the cut stalks and gathered into bundles to be stored in a rice barn until needed.

6/ After harvest, fields are burned off, producing a soil-protecting alkaline ash.

Rinse and repeat up to three times a year.

And the temples? The main thing that the rice crop needs is water. In general, the more water there is, the better the crop yield will be (ignoring the heavy use of fertilizers now). Human ingenuity can build all the channels and aqueducts, and engineers can work their miracles, but if the rain comes, then the crop is better. So you pray to the gods for suitable weather, especially as there are now three seasons a year straddling the wet and dry seasons. 

That's a gross over-simplification as the gods impacted (and still do) all aspects of Balinese life. But rice is the staple food. 

After all, who trusts meteorologists?