Visi to Chakdaha

Thanks to all. I met few farmers who are farming more than 12 kms away from the high road. Pesticide observation is correct. I have noted their following problems:

1. They use fertilizers following the advice of shop rather expert ;
2. They want regular visit of ADO from whom they can get idea about different diseases in the plant;
3. They want book on farming in local language;
4. One big farmer having 12 acre of farm land initially uses pesticides, weedies, fertilizers in the small area of land and getting good result, he introduces it in other areas. He has no education. For 35 years, he is engaged in farming. Currently. He has one shop of fertilizers. URL company tests his land as model plot. He is very much self-efficacious.
His only word - be attached in the farming despite of all odd circumstances.

Acknowledgments:

Professor (Retd) Amiya Saha of Kalyani University: He arranged two students to meet the farmers.


ATTITUDE TO MANPOWER AND FARM LAND

Changing family system from joint to nuclear causes huge loss of manpower in farming.
Another loss is due to higher education ( beyond primary education). People shift from traditional occupation to non-traditional areas due to higher education. I ask this issue to some farmers and get positive response.

During my visit in the north - east, I have noticed that many people do not want higher education due to loss of manpower in agriculture.

One farmer having more than 3 acres of land sells 4 bighas in every year for higher education to his son in Commerce. The son replied that he would not come to the agriculture. To him, loss of land is inevitable process for changing life style.

I ask similar question to my punjabi student but her reply is different. For her land is the asset and it's value is adding in geometric progrression.

It comes to my mind that attitude towards land varies with state or locality.


Attitude change

Yes, attitude change is possible if scientists instead of political figures with vested interests come forward to the farmers for education.

Currently, farmers are puzzled as the lands are not in their hands. I have seen their difficulty to make the land more fertile after use of chemical fertilizers. Some farmers wanted to learn some simple methods of soil testing. Soils are collected according to certain specifications. All farmers are not aware of it.

Again, they were apprehended about soil mixture - is the tested soil related to thier own land ?

We have to stop their unnecessary apprehension by cost effective scientific approach.

Perceived environmental uncertainty

a. Prediction difficulty
b. Dynamicity
c. Complex

Spring is a time of transition—leaves bud, the grass hints at green, and farmers are preparing for spring planting of crops that grow over the summer (such as corn, soybeans, and rice). It is also a time of uncertainty, as farmers and others try to get a sense of how the new season will unfold. Key data presented in USDA's annual Prospective Plantings report (released March 31) and other publications are helpful assessment tools. Still, questions remain. What will farmers plant, and how will markets respond?

At first glance, uncertainty this year appears particularly keen. Fluctuating energy prices in late winter and early spring have implications for farm production costs, including diesel fuel, irrigation pumping, and fertilizer. Prolonged dryness in the western U.S. and parts of the Great Plains complicates planting in those regions. Heightened competition from foreign countries in several markets—Brazil for soybeans, Russia and Ukraine for wheat, and China for several commodities—raises questions of how the global marketplace will shape up in 2003.

While weather and international factors are obvious sources of uncertainty, government policies affecting agriculture—including trade, commodity, and environmental policies—can be sources of uncertainty, too. Indeed, a USDA survey in the late 1990s indicated that policy and regulatory changes were perceived by farmers to rank highest among the risks they faced.

But are times more uncertain now than in the past? Uncertainty in agricultural markets can be measured in many different ways, but variability in commodity prices is one "bottom-line" way to assess the situation. Using prices for corn, a major crop planted in the spring, the answer appears to be "no." Variability in corn prices was quite high during the 1920s and 1930s, largely due to the collapse in grain prices in the post-World War I period and low yields in several years. Variability was low during the 1950s and 1960s, a period characterized by high government support, fairly stable yields, and consistent demand. From 1990 to the present, corn price variability appears to be near its long-term average.



Over time, of course, the prices an individual producer receives may be more or less variable than those at the aggregate level. Whatever comes, spring is a time for renewal…and, for farmers…a time to gather information and analyze it to best position themselves to weather the ups and downs of the market.

Source: http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/April03/UpFront/




ANXIETY OVER PEST MANAGEMENT

Farmers are anxious about different pests in the field and how to manage them with available pest management systems.

ANXIETY OVER FIELDS
This is applicable for shifting cultivators. They are anxious to understand which fields will produce more crops.

Job analysis: seeding

Job analysis includes (1) task taxonomy and (2) personnel specification. These are the basic jobs:

1. seeding -
1.1 Seed production and multiplication

In market, different HYV seeds are available. But the problem of planting these seeds is loss of genetic diversity in the land. Loss of genetic diversity can lose genes that could increase yield of new varieties in future.

Some farmers are breeding seeds in their farms. They multiply seeds by three ways - (a) self pollinated; (b)cross pollinated (c)both. The commercial crop wheat and rice are pure line varieties. Cross pollinated crops are maize and sunflower. Clonally propagated crops are some varieties of potato, sugarcane.

1.2 Processing and storage: Processing involves drying, cleaning, treating with chemicals, packaging seeds and assuring internal quality. Quality seed means the seed that resists pests and generate nutrients. In this stage, knowledge about different characteristics of seed is important.





1.1 Direct : seed spreading manually : Competency in eye-hand co-ordination,
1.2 Indirect: Using rice seed machine : Competency in eye-hand co-ordination.











2.Weeding
3. Irrigating
4.Harvesting
5. Threshing
6. Drying
6.Milling
7.Storage
8.Product processing
9. Trading

LINKS

About Fertilizer
http://www.fadinap.org/

SRI techniques

CHENNAI: Recently, N Sripathi of Paduvencherri, some 30 km south of Chennai, braving ridicule from co-farmers adopted the System of Rice
Intensification (SRI) on his two-and-half-acre farm. Now, he is expecting to double last season's harvest.

Last year, K Purushothaman of Nanmangalam adopted SRI and got per hectare 18 bags' more than the conventional method of farming (each bag weighs 75 kg of paddy).

In the traditional method, the average yield is around 45 bags' per hectare; Purushothaman got 63 bags.'. Last year, each bag' of paddy was sold for about Rs 1,050. "SRI has many advantages in terms of production cost and the yield per hectare. Farmers can adopt it to maximise net yield," said Purushothaman.

Under SRI, the adequate space between crops 22.5 cm ensures free air circulation and provides them with much-needed oxygen to grow tall. The adequate spacing also helps farmers detect rats and weeds. Using this technique, the required period for paddy cultivation can be brought down by 10 days (it is 120 days in the conventional method).

The most common pieces of equipment in SRI are the Conoweeder used to crush weeds and include them as bio-manure and Marker used to mark space between each crop. "At a time when housing projects and companies are coming up on farming lands in the suburbs, we have to adopt new methods to stay in our ancestral job. SRI can help us do that," said Sripathi.

Rice type and production

THE INTERNATIONAL Year of Rice is drawing to a close. But rice continues to be `life' for the Asians, in general, and Indians, in particular. Asia cultivates 137 million hectares of rice, of which India has a lion's share of 45 million hectares (137 million tonnes or two tonnes per hectare) that is a distant second to China, whose tonnage is twice that. Rice contributes to 15 per cent annual GDP of India and provides 43 per cent calorie requirement for more than 70 per cent of Indians.

India's population is expected to be 1.2 billion by 2012 and it will have to produce a whopping 120 million tonnes of rice to meet the burgeoning demand. Major constraints to rice production that India will face are land, water, labour and other inputs such as fertilisers, pesticides and insecticides, and even high quality germplasm, without affecting the already degraded and stressed agricultural environment. The big question is can India do it, given the current status of its agricultural capability.

At the moment, India has only high yielding varieties such as IR-64, Jaya, and Srjoo 52, and about 17 hybrid rice varieties have just made a hesitant debut. Resistance to major pests and diseases such as stem borers, gall midge, blast, bacterial leaf blight and sheath rot are limited both in high yielding varieties and hybrid rice. There has been a ten-fold increase in the cost of hybrid rice compared to high yielding varieties. The cost of hybrid rice seed per hectare is about Rs 2,000.

Under optimum growing conditions hybrid rice can provide a yield advantage of 1- 1.5 tonnes per hectare (still far short of China's 5 tonnes per hectare), and certainly provides a cost advantage of an average Rs 4,000 per hectare. Yield advantage of hybrids is still not consistent in all parts of South India where they have been introduced and, as such, adoption by farmers is slow.

Large-scale hybrid rice seed production is still undergoing refinement, and continues to represent major challenges for large-scale adoption. Although hybrid rice cultivation is an economically beneficial proposition, it has not been taken up on a large-scale by all rice farmers.

The mainstay of Indian rice cultivation is high-yielding rice varieties. Rice as a crop has notched impressive gains in its study and understanding in the past 25 years, thanks mostly to the efforts of research community aided by a fantastic applications of molecular biology and biotechnology through Rockefeller Foundation's International Rice Biotechnology Network and the IRRI-based Asian Rice Biotechnology Network, of which India has been an active partner. Rice genome has also been completely mapped and its sequence has been delineated in the last couple of years both by public and private sector scientists.

Once again, Indian scientists have made significant contributions to these international efforts and there is an impressive array of biotechnology research projects funded both by the Department of Biotechnology and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, to develop genetically engineered rice for stem borers, blast resistance, bacterial leaf blight resistance and biofortification of micronutrients; of which Golden Rice is important.

Indian scientists have developed Bt rice and have been field testing for a couple of years now, and it is time to push it for rapid commercialisation after a thorough regulatory review. The chances of finding natural resistance to major pests and diseases in rice seems bleak and hybrid rice may not be much of a salvation.

Therefore, the best option now seems to be the deployment of genetically engineered rice that is undergoing field tests. The GM rice varieties must be rapidly commercialised through a rigorous regulatory review encompassing all aspects of bio safety and environmental impacts.

The alleged significant environmental impact issue relative to GM rice is that it has the potential to reduce or seriously impact the wild and weedy relatives (biodiversity) of rice, as India is one of the major centres of rice biodiversity.

This issue is not as significant as it is made out to be as rice is predominantly a self-pollinating crop and gene flow is limited to the rice growing tracts far away from where rice biodiversity occurs. And, even if novel genes from GM rice flow into wild and weedy relatives, their introgression will be very low due to lack of selection pressure and the progeny will be sterile and unfit for survival.

Any gene introgression into wild weedy relatives will only result in enhanced genetic diversity and not less. There is really no known plausible pathway of gene flow from GM rice that would deleteriously affect rice biodiversity.

India is also home to the world's largest number of malnourished people, most of whom are women and children.

Almost 15 million women and children suffer from Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD) and most of them fall under the poorest of poor category. The golden rice development must be put on fast track and be made viable to the suffering people.

Similarly iron-rich GM rice is also under development along many other bio-fortified crops that should not be delayed or denied to suffering deserving and needy sections of India.

Another important problem of rice production in upland rice is weed control that costs almost 30 per cent of the total cost of crop cultivation. In transplanted rice, yield loss due to weeds can vary from 18-48 per cent and yield loss of up to 90 per cent is not unheard of.

The number of herbicides for weed control in rice cultivation is getting narrower, making integrated weed management a real challenge in medium- to largescale (20- 100 acre) rice farms.

Additionally, manual labour costs are making it increasingly uneconomical to cultivate rice in many parts of India. Herbicide resistant GM rice can be a weapon of choice for weed control under such circumstances, an option that should not be dispensed with based on the fear of the scientifically bogus "genetic pollution" and 66 genetic contamination" scares.

Non-GM herbicide resistant rice is already available as an option but only for imidizialone class of herbicides, and what is needed is a broad spectrum, post-emergent herbicide resistance crop that is now readily available in the form GM rice, and it should be tested and tried to determine its feasibility without having to worry about undue biosafety or environmental impacts that are no more or less the same as for any other introduced rice variety into Indian agriculture.

If non-GM herbicide resistant rice has not done any damage to the biodiversity of rice, then there is no earthly reason why GM herbicide resistant rice should not be cultivated.

Many environmental impact assessments of GM rice have come to a finding of no significant impact on the environment, and as such there should not be any unique environmental impact issue in the Indian situation.

Salt-and drought-tolerant GM rice is also undergoing field tests, which should also be put on a fast track to commercialisation. GM rice has a clear advantage as it can address many of the production constraints in India and help protect environment by cutting down on chemical inputs.

There is a global movement to stop or delay deployment of GM crops technology and India must not allow useful GM rice to be held hostage and deny itself the fruits of this technology.

India must put in place a scientifically rigorous regulatory oversight system to address any potential biosafety and environmental impact issues and bring the fruits of modem technology to bear on rice improvement and production.

Given some of the major biotic and abiotic: constraints for increasing the rice production in the years ahead, GM rice becomes a highly relevant option for India, and an option that must not be either delayed or denied based on baseless unscientific fears. China, which is already way ahead in rice production now, has announced that it will commercialise GM rice in 2005.

If India does not get ready to implement GM rice in a short order, stealth GM rice will find its own way into Indian markets just as Bt-cotton did. India must not waste too much time on evaluating the utility of GM rice for improving agriculture.

Source:http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/12/17/stories/2004121700110900.htm

Agricultural psychology: review

From: Shanteau, J. (2001), Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science (3rd ed). Craig-
head, W. E., & Nemeroff, C. B. (Eds). NY: Wiley.
AGRICULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY

In contrast to other social sciences that have developed specialized subdisciplines and/or applica-
tion interests in agriculture, psychology historically has not been known for its concern with rural
issues. For instance, there has not been any psychological counterpart to such social science spe-
cialties as agricultural economics, rural sociology, agricultural marketing, or rural geography.
Nonetheless, psychological perspectives have interacted with agricultural issues in several do-
mains: (1) assessment of the therapeutic needs of rural populations, (2) investigation of farming
tasks and skills, (3) analysis of expert agricultural judges, (4) evaluation of farm management deci-
sions, and (5) statistics and experimental design.

THERAPEUTIC NEEDS
Rural life is often portrayed in an idyllic “down to earth” fashion. Rural communities are assumed
to be less stressful and more humane than urban life. However, epidemiological studies have
shown serious mental health problems exist in rural communities (Henggeler, 1983). In fact,
Husaini, Neff, and Stone (1979) found that many interpersonal problems have higher rates of inci-
dence in rural areas. Despite the need, rural communities often lack many of the mental health ser-
vices taken for granted in cities. Hoagland (1978) reported that only 17.5% of rural poverty areas
had adequate mental health services (compared to 49% of 49% of urban poverty areas).

One major reason for this lack of mental health services is that most clinicians and counselors are
trained in large urban universities. Faculty (and students) are thus unfamiliar with the values, con-
cerns, and even the language of rural living. Consequently, specialized programs have evolved to
prepare mental health-care providers with the skills and abilities to cope with problems encoun-
tered in rural communities. For example, Heyman (1983) described a model for preparing commu-
nity psychologists to work in rural regions of the country. Similarly, Edgerton (1983) considers
some ingenious methods that mental health professionals have used to cope with the limitations of
providing services in rural contexts, e.g., traveling clinics and in-school centers.

One issue that has received much attention in studies of rural communities has been child abuse.
Such abuse involves a pathological interaction between the child, the caregiver, and the situation.
Rural environments are different in many respects from the more widely understood urban envi-
ronment. It should not be surprising, therefore, to find that rural child abuse is perceived in a dif-
ferent light and frequently goes unreported. Nonetheless, home-based early intervention programs
are successful in helping “at risk” children in rural areas (Rosenberg & Reppucci, 1983).

FARMING TASKS AND SKILLS
Traditionally, farmers and ranchers were expected to be proficient in many manual and physical
tasks. Work psychologists have been involved in examining these skills, e.g., Tomlinson (1970)
found that dairy workers must be proficient in nine separate tasks, ranging from operating milking
machines to evaluating the health of cows. Thus, a traditional farmer or rancher needed to be a
jack-of-all-trades, with general skills in many areas.
However, with the increased mechanization and computerization in agriculture, there has been a
shift in the skills needed. Instead of many general abilities, more specialized skills are necessary
now. Moreover, instead of emphasizing manual skills, modern agribusiness places greater demand
on cognitive abilities. For example, Matthews (1978) reported that handling a modern combine
harvester involves simultaneous monitoring and control of at least seven tasks. Given the complex-
ity of the cognitive demands, there has been considerable concern over the human factors compo-
nent in increasingly high rate of farm accidents (Mainzer, 1966).

With the trend away from small family farms to large corporate farming, there is a greater need for
farmers with problem solving and management skills (Stevens, 1970). This has produced changes
in both the education and the practice of today’s farmers. As a result, behavioral investigators have
turned their interests toward analysis of higher thought processes (Shanteau, 1992).

AGRICULTURAL EXPERTISE
Many early insights into the psychology of expertise arose from studies of agricultural workers.
For instance, one of the earliest known studies of experts in any domain was conducted in 1917 by
Hughes. His data revealed that corn rated highest by expert corn judges did not produce the highest
yield. In 1923, Wallace (later vice-president under Franklin Roosevelt) reanalyzed Hughes’ data
using path analysis. He showed (1) corn judges largely agreed with each other, but (2) their ratings
correlated only slightly with crop yields.

Trumbo, Adams, Milner, and Schipper (1962) asked licensed grain inspectors to judge samples of
wheat. Nearly one-third of the samples were misgraded and, when graded a second time, over one-
third were given a different grade. Also, increased experienced made judges more confident, but
not necessarily more accurate. Finally, more experienced judges tended to overgrade the wheat
samples (perhaps the original form of “grade inflation”).

One source of errors in agricultural judgment is the presence of irrelevant factors. Gaeth and
Shanteau (1984) noted that nondiagnostic material (e.g., excessive moisture) significantly im-
pacted the decisions of soil judges. They also found that cognitive training was successful in com-
pensating for the presence of these irrelevant materials. Another approach to improving expert
judgment was observed in weather forecasting. Murphy and Winkler (1977) found that precipita-
tion forecasts could be improved using a feedback system based on Brier scores (a quadratic scor-
ing system). Since then, accuracy of weather forecasts has increased dramatically (Stewart, et al.,
1997).

FARM MANAGEMENT DECISIONS
There have been frequent analyses of the choices needed to manage a farm. Most of this work has
been concerned with how economic decisions should be made. There has been concern recently in
helping farmers cope with cognitive limitations when they make choices. Rajala and Sage (1979)
considered various methods intended to help farmers think more effectively about their decisions.
For instance, farmers consistently make suboptimal allocations when buying crop or drought in-
surance (Anderson, 1974). However, Kunreuther (1979) found that farmers could be persuaded to
think more effectively about buying insurance, e.g., by taking a longer time perspective.

Insights into marketing and consumer behavior have come from studies in agriculture. For in-
stance, the pioneering analysis of new-product diffusion by Rogers (1962) was based on farmers’
willingness to adopt new agricultural equipment. His classification of individuals into “innovators,
early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards” is now widely accepted.

STATISTICS AND EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
One area where there has been a long-standing interface between psychology and agriculture has
been in the development of statistical analysis and research design. A century ago, psychologists
such as Galton were instrumental in building the basis of modern statistical thinking (Gigerenzer,
et al, 1989). Through such seminal efforts, later psychologists (e.g., Cattell and Thurstone) built
the foundation for application of statistics to behavioral research.

Parallel to this effort, statisticians working in agricultural settings (such as Fisher) developed much
of what is now considered standard experimental design and analysis. According to Brown (1972),
concepts of random assignment and factorial designs initially were proposed to advance agricul-
tural science. Indeed, many terms commonly used today in statistics, e.g., “split plot designs,” r e-
flect an agricultural background.

In summary, although “agricultural psychology” is not normally recognized as a subfield of ps y-
chology, there have been many applications of behavioral ideas in agricultural settings. Moreover,
agricultural issues have impacted psychology in a variety of often unappreciated ways.

REFERENCES

Anderson, D. R. (1974). The national flood insurance program – problems and potentials. Journal
of Risk and Insurance, 41, 579-599.

Brown, B. W. (1972). Statistics, scientific method, and smoking. In J. M. Tanur (Ed.), Statistics: A
guide to the unknown. San Francisco: Holden-Day, Inc.

Edgerton, J. W. (1983). Models of service delivery. In A. W. Childs & G. B. Melton (Eds.), Rural
psychology. NY: Plenum Press.

Gaeth, G. J., & Shanteau, J. (1984). Reducing the influence of irrelevant information on experi-
enced decision makers. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 33, 263-282.

Gigerenzer, G., Switjink, Z., Porter, T., Daston, L. J., Beatty, J., & Kruger, L. (1989). The empire
of chance: How probability changed science and everyday life. London, Cambridge Univ. Press.

Henggeler, S. W. (1983). Needs assessments in rural areas: Issues and problems. In A. W. Childs
& G. B. Melton (Eds.), Rural psychology. NY: Plenum Press.

Heyman, S. R. (1983). Problems in program development and the development of alternatives. In
A. W. Childs & G. B. Melton (Eds.), Rural psychology. NY: Plenum Press.

Hoagland, M. (1978). A new day in rural mental services. In, New dimensions in mental health:
Report from the Director, National Institute of Mental Health. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govern-
ment Printing Office.

Hughes, H. D. (1917). An interesting corn seed experiment. The Iowa Agriculturalist, 17, 424-425.

Husaini, B. A., Neff, J. A., & Stone, R. H. (1979). Psychiatric impairment in rural communities.
Journal of Community Psychology, 7, 137-146.

Kunreuther, H. (1979). Why aren’t they insured ? The Journal of Insurance, XL, No. 5.

Mainzer, W. (1966). Accident prevention in the cowshed. British Journal of Industrial Medicine,
23, 24.

Matthews, J. (1978). The farm worker. In W. T. Singleton (Ed.), The analysis of practical skills.
Baltimore: University Park Press.

Murphy, A. H., & Winkler, R. L. (1977). Can weather forecasters formulate reliable probability
forecasts of precipitation and temperature? National Weather Digest, 2, 2-9.

Rajala, D. W., & Sage, A. P. (1979). On information structuring in choice making: A study of sys-
tems engineering decision making in beef cattle production. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man,
and Cybernetics, SMC-9, 525-533.

Rogers, E. M. (1962). Diffusion of innovations. NY: The Free Press.

Rosenberg, M. S. & Reppucci, N. D. (1983). In A. W. Childs & G. B. Melton (Eds.), Rural psy-
chology. NY: Plenum Press.

Shanteau, J. (1989). Psychological characteristics of agricultural experts: Applications to expert
systems. In A. Weiss (Ed.), Climate and agriculture: Systems approaches to decision making. Lin-
coln, NB: University of Nebraska Press.

Stevens, G. N. (1970). The human operator and quality inspection of horticultural produce. Jour-
nal of the Institute of Agricultural Engineering, 25, 1.

Stewart, T. R., Roebber, P. J., & Bosart, L. F. (1997). The importance of the task in analyzing ex-
pert judgment. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 69, 205-219.

Tomlinson, R. W. (1970). The assessment of workload in agricultural tasks. Journal of the Pro-
ceedings of the Institute of Agricultural Engineering, 25, 18.

Trumbo, D., Adams, C., Milner, M., & Schipper, L. (1962). Reliability and accuracy in the inspec-
tion of hard red winter wheat. Cereal Science Today, 7, 62-71.

Wallace, H. A. (1923). What is in the corn judge’s mind? Journal of the American Society of
Agronomy, 15, 300-304.
SUGGESTED READING

Childs, A. W., & Melton, G. B. (1983). Rural psychology. New York: Plenum Press.

Dillon, J. L., & Scandizzo, P. L. (1978). Risk attitudes of subsistence farmers in northeast Brazil:
A sampling approach. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 60, 425-435.

Kohler, W. (1929). Simple structural functions in the chimpanzee and the chicken. In W. D. Ellis
(Ed.), A source book of Gestalt psychology. NY: Harcourt Brace.

Lorenz, K. (1937). The companion in the bird’s world. Auk, 54, 245-273.

Meadows, A. W., Lovibond, S. H., & John, R. D. (1959). The establishment of psychophysical
standards in the sorting of fruit. Occupational psychology, 33, 217.

Phelps, R. H., & Shanteau, J. (1978). Livestock judges: How much information can an expert use?
Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 21, 209-219.

Seabrook, M. F. (1972). A study of the influence of cowman’s personality and job satisfaction on
yield of dairy cows. Journal of Agricultural Laboratory Science, 1.


J. SHANTEAU
Kansas State University

Rice as seed

Rice as grain

Rice is a member of the grass family and is related to other grass plants such as wheat, oats and barley which produce grain for food. These are known as cereals. Rice is an annual plant, which means it completes its entire life cycle within a year.



Rice plants start their life as tiny rice grains sown in irrigated fields, and grow to become green, grassy plants about one meter tall. Each plant contains many heads full of tiny rice grains which turn golden when the rice plant is ready to harvest.

Source:
The Workbook Series - Rice Book, Kondinin Group 2000
Ricegrowers Limited - Sunrice

WITHIN RICE



RICE MILLING

Rice is harvested from rice plant in form of seed called paddy, consisting of husk, bran, germ and starch. This starch part is what we consume as rice.

To get from paddy to rice needed to pass through several steps:



Source: www.bernas.com.my/process.htm

Rice cultivatiion

Farmers themselves are ploughing the land in specific season. Small farmers have 1 or

1.5 hectares of land. They can not afford tractor. But big farmers can afford the tractor. Some farmers develop cooperative system to plough the land by tractor.
In the early morning, usually farmers are leaving their houses with cattle and ploughing materials. In order to avoid heat of scorching sun, usually, they wear caps.


1. Seeding
2.Weeding
3. Irrigating
4.Harvesting
5. Threshing
6. Drying
6.Milling
7.Storage
8.Product processing
9. Trading