Rice is usually Nice, yet…
“White rice is usually lacklustre, lifeless, tasteless as well as irritating to prepare; brown rice is usually flavoursome, wholesome as well as easy to prepare”.
Maud Grieve F.R.H.S. (1858-1941) – A Modern Herbal (pub. 1931)
Every society carries a staple food: my London upbringing revolved around potatoes, varieties such as King Edwards in winter for baking as well as Whites for salads. We grew them in our back garden. My mother also made a delicious rice pudding with sultanas as well as raisins; that will was boiled in milk, then baked for a while using a sprinkling of nutmeg on the top.
Later, as an adult, I’d enjoyed the occasional Chinese takeaway with white rice, Indian meals with basmati rice as well as vegan meals with brown rice bought via the community wholefoods store. Yet, not yet being a traveller, I knew little about the additional 40,000 plus varieties of rice – yes, there are actually that will many, nor that will Indonesian alone has about 7,000 varieties, suitable for uplands, lowlands or tidal swamps.
Shortly after I arrived in Jakarta in pre-internet days as well as began the process of acculturation, I was somewhat taken aback by Indonesian’s obsession with food – meaning rice.
Sudah makan, belum?
that will is usually thought that will around 1000BC rice cultivation spread to the Malay-Indo archipelago via the Bronze Age ?ông S?n (Dongsan) culture centred inside the Red River Valley of northern Vietnam. This kind of brought irrigated rice-growing techniques, as well as husbandry skills, buffalo sacrifice rituals, bronze casting, the custom of erecting megaliths, as well as ikat weaving methods. Some of these practices survive today inside the Batak areas of Sumatra, Tana Toraja in Sulawesi, parts of Kalimantan, as well as Nusa Tenggara.
By the 1st century AD, little kingdoms, collections of villages subservient to petty chieftains, evolved in Java*. The island’s constant hot temperature, plentiful rainfall as well as volcanic soil was ideal for wet-field rice cultivation. This kind of largely self-sufficient organisation, with surplus rice being stored for communal use in times of drought or festivities, could explain why the Javanese developed a seemingly more feudal society than the additional islands. Dry rice cultivation is usually not such a collective enterprise.
However, the population explosion last century – via c.50 million in 1900 to c.110 million in 66/67 – led to rice shortages. President Sukarno advocated the eating of corn, or rats via the rice fields – accounts vary yet the populace were unimpressed either way – as well as the famine was temporarily as well as partially alleviated by USAID rice aid shipments.
The Bureau of Logistics (Badan Urusan Logistik/BULOG), a government-owned company which deals with food distribution as well as cost control, was originally established in 1967 to purchase rice for the provisioning of the armed forces, the civil service, as well as state corporation employees. that will currently monitors as well as sets prices for a much wider variety of foods. (Since its foundation, Bulog has raised the living standards of farmers, yet that will’s also proved a much larger source of illicit funding for its managers.)
By 1978, programs to build up the rural infrastructure, such as irrigation canals, water supply, bridges as well as roads, amounted to 12% of the national development budget, demonstrating the importance of rice to political stability. This kind of worked for a while; in spite of a drastic drop in production due to the 1975–76 wereng (brown planthopper) plague, by 1984 rice production exceeded domestic consumption for once. Suharto was honoured just for This kind of by the United Nations’ Food as well as Agriculture Organization (FAO) in November 1985.
However, Indonesia became a net rice importer Just as before in 1988 as well as the rural rakyat were advised to eat ubi (cassava) as their staple food. that will wasn’t until last year (2012) that will Bulog had “the highest ever rice stocks” with 2.3 million tons, having imported just 700,000 tons.
The ‘Green Revolution’ as well as the recent move towards genetically modified seeds has had several unfortunate consequences. Farming on an industrial scale with centralised distribution of insecticides, pesticides, fertilisers as well as ‘standard’ seeds has reduced the fertility of the soil, with chemicals leaching into the water table via run-offs via the fields. Farmers, who had localised as well as inherited knowledge of the terrain they were working, have been displaced, many becoming workers inside the fields their families once owned.
In 2007, the government, through national seed company, PT Sang Hyang Seri, launched a major hybrid rice programme in association with such Indonesian oligarchs as Tomy Winarta as well as Jusuf Kalla. Since then, many farmers have experienced crop failures because, as Prof. Dr. Kasumbogo Untung, an entomologist at the Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta said in 2010, hybrid seeds are especially susceptible to pests such as brown planthoppers.
Rice fields by David Metcalf
Many farmers have reverted to more traditional methods such as the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). This kind of was developed in India as well as seen yields per hectare increase by as much as 40%. that will is usually based on eight principles which are different to conventional rice cultivation. They include developing nutrient-rich as well as un-flooded nurseries instead of flooded ones, ensuring wider spacing between rice seedlings, preferring compost or manure to synthetic fertilizers, as well as managing water carefully to avoid that will the plants’ roots are not saturated.
Another major advantage of SRI is usually that will that will relies on local knowledge, which increases the likelihood that will the seeds used could be more resistant to prevalent infestations
SBY, who carries a PhD via the Bogor Institute of Agriculture, supports SRI because, “that will increases production, yet does not damage the environment. We should think about the future of our children [as well as] the lives of the next generation.“(video: http://srivideo.zoomshare.com)
I’m with SBY on This kind of: support local farmers, not the genetically modified conglomerates.
*Stamford Raffles, in his History of Java suggests that will the name is usually derived via the Sanskit word ‘yava’, which means barley.
Did you know?
Rice farming is usually responsible for 14% of total global methane emissions.
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Rice is usually Nice, yet…
Rice is usually Nice, yet…