the rice cycle

Vietnam is variously described as the 2nd and 3rd biggest rice exporting country in the world. Either way, they grow a lot of rice. The combination of lots of sunshine, massive amounts of tropical rain, and huge expanses of flat land, makes Vietnam (like much of South East Asia) very fertile and perfect for rice farming. The Southern and Central areas manage to coax three harvests a year out of the land. The North manages two. Obviously there are some large areas of Vietnam where rice is grown commercially (particularly in the South), but certainly here it's small scale. The majority of families around here rent small patches of land from the local officials, and their harvest is used only to feed the family that grows it, not for selling on. Growing rice is a labour intensive, endless cycle, and I was shocked to discover that around here, most people who farm rice earn in a year the same as our "moderate" VSO monthly allowance.

So, living and working with people who grow rice, I've learnt quite a bit about the process, and I thought I'd share it with you, dear reader....

Being a "cycle", there isn't a beginning to start at, but it seems right to begin when the ground is empty....

Before they plough, people soften the empty ground by flooding it with water, using irrigation channels and small generator-driven pumps. For small scale farming like this, with minimal income generation, it's not economically viable to buy machinery to lighten the physical load. Some people have tried forming co-operatives to purchase ploughs etc, but the obvious difficulty with this is that everyone is at the same point in the cycle at the same time. i.e. they need the machines at the same time. So... it's generally all done by hand. A lot of people keep buffalo to pull simple ploughs (they also provide manure for growing vegetables at home), and at ploughing time you'll see lean bodies out in the fields from morning till night hacking at the land with long sticks with a blade perpendular at the end.

Once the ground is prepared, the ground is flooded again, or the rain arrives. Either way, the water sinks in and gets the ground soft and ready.

Grains of rice from the last harvest are then scattered across the land, and left to grow. A bit of a rest..... When the young plants reach around 10-15cm, they are pulled up (very easily, in flooded paddy fields) and transplanted evenly in rows.

I've been trying to attach a movie is of me hindering the transplanting process - I was soooooooo slow. But I am not enough of a technological geekoid to figure out how to get a .wlmp onto blogspot. If anyone is... please drop me a line?! Until I figure it out, you'll have to make do with a photo...

Then it's a case of letting the sun shine, avoiding the raining rain, and watching the countryside get greener and greener. Many people spray fertilisers and insecticides during the rice's main period of growth.

After around 1-2 months growth, when the rice is tall and starts to turn yellow gold in colour, it's all hands on deck as the plants are cut with sythes....

.....laid out to dry, threshed (by hand) to remove the rice kernels from the stalks (around 60-70 kernels per plant), and the kernels laid out in the sun to dry (often along the sides of the roads).

The stalks are collected up and stored to provide fuel for fires and food and bedding for buffalos

Any stalks remaining in the land are burned, and the ground is ready for the next cycle....

Once the rice kernels have dried, they're taken in large bags on the back of motorbikes to the village to be put through a machine which shakes off the husks. The husks are collected to feed the pigs, and the rice is then ready to be stored in the home....

and...... EATEN!

(Or turned into fat noodles, thin noodles, round noodles, dried noodles, rice crackers, rice flour, rice cakes, rice pancakes.....)

I'm finding it incredible how the changing landscape affects my mood. I think it must have some effect on everyone here (although obviously the signs and signals of an impending or completed harvest hold more positive meaning for those who depend on it for their daily.. er, rice - just like endless rain is tiresome for me but a celebrated necessity for those farming).

When the fields are damp and green and vibrant, I feel joyful, and positive, and full of life. As the world turns brown and dry, I've noticed I more easily feel tired, and frustrated. And for the short period when the harvest is gathered and the fields are burning and blackened, I feel awful. This is probably not just a psychological response to the aesthetic, but also physiological - the constant smoke in the air makes your eyes sting and your chest hurt. This deep, palpable connection with the land is something I've come to realise I've been too removed from at home, and I think is missing in a lot of our urban 'Western' lives. I'm thinking about a few months WWOOFing when I finish here.....