Rice farming in Bali

Alongside Java, Bali is among the most densely populated places on earth: more than 3 million people live on its 5,561 square kilometres – a density of around 575 people per square kilometre. On Java, almost as large as Austria and Switzerland combined, live some 120 million people. An enormous demand for food – met by wet rice. Balinese farmers were often recruited to establish rice-growing culture on other islands too.

The subak cooperative

Unique to Bali is the subak rice-field cooperative, which manages the entire process of rice growing. Today all fields are privately owned but remain subject to the subak. Each field uphill is responsible for irrigating the fields below; if a field near a village were rezoned as building land, a strip of land at least half a metre wide would have to be ceded to the subak to carry the water through. The principle of live and let live applies.

Ploughing and planting

Consider the cycle of a planting, beginning after the harvest: a field is flooded and then ploughed in its wet, softened state. On flat fields you now often see the "Japanese cow" – a rice-field tractor; otherwise water buffalo or cattle do the work. In the mountains the terraces are so narrow that not even an ox could turn: there the farmers dig the soil over with a hoe. The field is then levelled and the clay pressed firm.

Meanwhile a small area of the field is set apart and seed laid out on it. The grains germinate and tiny plants grow up, looking like young grass. These seedlings are lifted in bunches and pushed into the mud by hand – never more than three to five together, about 20 centimetres apart.

The harvest and the ani-ani knife

In the lowlands, where hybrid rice dominates, whole sheaves are now cut with a sickle and threshed immediately in the field – with highly bred hybrid rice, too many grains would otherwise fall from the ears.

In the mountains an ancient tool is still used for the rice harvest: the ani-ani knife, with which every single ear is cut. The Balinese say: one does not want to show the sacred rice plant when it will be killed – so, ever so gently, each ear is cut with a blade hidden in the hollow of the hand.

Yields and varieties

The yields are astonishing: with hybrid rice, Indonesia reckons on three to four harvests in about 14 months, each yielding six to eight tonnes per hectare. Besides various white hybrid varieties, Balinese mountain rice also produces black rice (for sweet rice pudding), red-brown rice for medicinal tea, a milky-white grain for rice flour (glass noodles and countless Balinese rice cakes) and a very tasty red-brown table rice.

If you would like to experience rice farming up close, our Tour 3 – Rice field hike leads right through the rice fields of West Bali.