The Rice of Bali

The mountain lakes, the gentle climate and the volcano-enriched soils of Bali are ideally suited for the growing of rice (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.

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, which dates from as early as the 9th century AD, is an ingenious and complex network of irrigation channels, tunnels and aqueducts that diverts water from sources high up in the mountains to water-sharing communities known as subak.

The Rice-Growing Cycle

• Rice seed is planted in a protected bed. While the seedlings mature, farmers prepare the fields.
• The planting basin is prepared by flooding, ploughing and levelling the field.
• 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.
• Harvesting is done by women, who cut the stalks with a small knife concealed in their palms so as not to frighten the rice goddess.
• High-yield varieties of rice 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.
• After harvest, fields are burned off, producing a soil-protecting alkaline ash.

One of the most famous rice terrace in Bali is located in Tegallalang, near Ubud.