Over the centuries, the Balinese rice culture has evolved into one of the world’s most unique cultures, inextricably connected to the island’s identity.
More than 2,500 years ago, immigrants from southern China and Vietnam brought with them the method of Sawah, or irrigated rice cultivation. The shifting monsoon climate has a significant impact on the island of Bali, providing sufficient water for intensive agricultural use like rice culture. Also, the volcanic soils are highly fruitful.
Most of the required water comes from higher regions, where rainfall is more frequent and consistent than in the plains and from the lakes of the central highlands.
Although wet rice cultivation accounts for just twenty percent of the acreage, the terraces appear to be unending, particularly in the province of Tabanan.
Like beautiful green stairways to paradise, the masterfully laid-out rice terraces ascend the mountain slopes. Green needles reflect in the silvery water when the fragile, light green rice seedlings are planted.
The fields become a lush green in just two months. The colour of the grain changes to golden yellow as it ripens.
Rice is the Balinese staple meal
Nasi, the Indonesian word for cooked rice, also refers to a complete meal.
Everything with rice is considered a side dish.
Rice is also frequently used as a form of payment instead of money, such as to pay salaries and the like.
Most cultivated rice is white, although there are also reddish-brown rice and black glutinous rice.
Dewi Sri
From sowing to harvesting, rice farming is accompanied by significant ceremonies dedicated to the rice goddess, Devi Sri.
She is probably Bali’s most venerated deity.
Every rice field has an altar in her honour, where fresh offerings are placed every day.
To placate the bad spirits that hinder good growth, the fields are blessed with holy water (air suci) or arrack.
Subak
Rice cultivation in Bali is done by irrigation cooperatives. What is known as “Banjar” for the villagers is “Subak” for rice farmers.
Beras Bali is the name given to Bali’s traditional rice.
It has a lovely aroma and is four times the cost of regular rice. There are several reasons for this:
Beras Bali rice needs 150 days to ripen, while the most widely used modernized rice requires only 120 days.
Its stalks are longer, wrapped into sheaves after harvesting, and dried in the sun. The husks are then removed by being pounded in a big wooden mortar. Other rice varieties have more readily falling grains than “Beras Bali”; thus, they must be threshed soon after harvesting. However, this removes the need for granaries.
That explains why the conventional version is so expensive.
Despite the effort, the Balinese prefer traditional rice varieties to modern varieties.
To put it simply, it tastes better to them.
Furthermore, fast-growing rice that has been bred for large yields, allowing for three harvests each year, leaches the soil considerably more. Cheap, mass-produced goods find buyers in densely populated Java, among rural refugees in Denpasar and other tourist locations, and among all those who need to manage every rupiah.
Harvested by hand
Every year, more than ten million tons of rice ripen on the island of Bali. This quantity must be harvested by hand.
During harvest season, you can see impoverished tent huts, in which harvest workers reside on the outskirts of the rice fields.
The fields are ploughed with cattle at the beginning of the year, then hoed and levelled.
The prepared seeds are spread in a small part of the field in March. Gates and nets protect the tiny green plantlets from wild animals and birds.
After six weeks, the grain is plucked out and replanted to the real field in rows.
A month later, the field is drained for a week to allow for weeding before being irrigated once again until it reaches maturity.
After that, the soil is rarely watered so that it can harden.
Brightly coloured lines are erected across the fields to protect the crops from birds. The numerous brown geese that are driven across the irrigated fields ensure that the pests are exterminated.
Because the stalks are cut by hand in bunches using special knives, many harvest workers are required during harvest. Bundled sheaves weighing 20 kg are then carried to storage on the shoulders of porters.
Traditional manual labour is an ideal cultivation method in a region where labour is less expensive than machinery and where the rice fields are not suited for tractor use.
The harvest profit is distributed proportionately
The field owner receives the lion’s share (forty percent) even though he rarely takes care of anything.
The renter, who does the most of the labour, also receives forty percent, with all reapers and porters receiving ten percent apiece.
Long before the harvest, some intermediaries acquire the projected production from the tenants and organize armies of migrant workers. Debt and inflation establish a vicious loop.
From August onward, the second sowing is generally followed by a faster-growing, less flavourful type.
Harvests occur three times a year at a distinct rhythm that focuses on mass production.
“If you give me rice, I’ll eat today; if you teach me how to grow rice, I’ll eat every day.”
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