Agriculture – Yesterday and Today

We won’t mince our words. Traditional rice agriculture is a dying trade. It is losing out to globalisation and the need for faster harvest producing technology in order for corporations (MNCs) and governments to reap the economic benefits that 3 billion (Environmental and Developmental Challenges, 2004) rice-eating people could generate. Put simply, the rice business is simply too lucrative to ignore.

Traditionally, there are 3 types of rice farming; shifting cultivation (eg. Iban community), flood-plain agriculture (eg. Thailand), and rice-terraces (eg. Phillipines, Indonesia). Shifting cultivation mainly endorses the use of the slash-and-burn technique. But farmers are now under intense pressure from environmentalists and government to stop this form of farming completely due to the apparent environment harms deforestation has on Earth’s precarious global warming situation now.

Food-plain agriculture is irrigated naturally by water from “great rivers of Southeast Asia” and found in “home to the worlds highest densities of human populations”. (Piper, 1993) The advantage of cultivating flood plains lies in the fact that rice can continually be sown on the same plot of land without causing any loss of fertility (with help from decaying weeds) as compared to modern forms of rice agriculture where copious amounts of “expensive inputs” are added and still result in loss of land fertility. (Piper, 1993) Furthermore, broadcasting of seeds can be practised since there is vast land area for farmer to do so, increasing efficiency and the amount of crop sown. However, harvesting is always at the mercy of unpredictable weather changes and globalisation and fast increasing populations in SEA are factors that now demand for the assurance of bountiful harvests, with no exceptions for failure.

Another famous form of rice agriculture is the formation of rice terraces, commonly found in hilly areas around the region like Philippines and Bali. The crucial aspect of terraces is the maintenance and upkeep of the land each family own, despite the relatively small size of each individual plot of land. If not carefully handled, terraces will tend to slide downhill and it will most definitely be difficult for the farmers to start all over again somewhere else. (Piper, 1993)

Refer to Weis’ earlier post on Banaue Rice Terraces: Stairways to Heaven for more information on rice terraces.

Unfortunately, it seems that new methods such as hybrid rice breeding have entered the world of agriculture and threaten the existence and relevance of traditional forms of rice agriculture. Before we go on, here’s a description of hybrid breeding taken from a fact sheet released by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO):

http://www.fao.org/rice2004/en/f-sheet/factsheet6.pdf

Now, anyone who has read through this fact sheet would agree that hybrid technology is definitely beneficial for any rice-eating society today. With the problem of fast-growing populations, hybrid rice cultivation helps not simply with providing enough food for everyone but also create plenty of labour farming jobs for countless people. So what’s for us to grunt about?

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining that hybrid cultivation is bad for SEA. In fact, without this technology, all of us would have trouble finding rice to eat and would have had to rely on some other staple by now. So yes, I am thankful to technology for having enabled me to continue eating rice every day. However, my concern lies with the slowly dying traditional culture of rice farming (be it ceremonies, rituals or the method of planting itself) as a result of globalisation and consumerism, which forces farmers to conform to newer ways of rice planting in order not to be fazed out completely. Obviously, traditional farming cannot compare in terms of speed or yields to hybrid rice cultivation. But removing all economic concerns, we should realise that when traditional agriculture disappears eventually, SEA will be left with close to no distinct feature that identifies our region and sets us apart from the rest of the world.

While this might not have an effect on us directly or at all, I still feel that culture and tradition is one of the most important things that any country or region cannot do without. Essentially, this is the problem of globalisation that is spreading throughout the world now. Do we not want the children of future generations to come to be able to differentiate their own families and countries from others through distinct characteristics of their country’s culture and heritage?

References

Piper, Jacqueline M. (1993). Rice in South-East Asia: Cultures and Landscapes.UK: Oxford University Press.