Happy Earth Day!
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
This year PaperTigers celebrates Earth Day by kicking off Jan Reynolds’ blog tour of Cycle of Rice, Cycle of Life: A Story of Sustainable Farming.
Author/photographer of Celebrate! Connections Among Cultures and the “Vanishing Cultures” series, Jan is no stranger to turning world cultures and natural environments into beautiful and educational books for children. With this new title, Cycle of Rice, Cycle of Life, she has put together a fascinating photo essay that explains sustainable farming by using the Balinese traditional system of rice farming as an example of “growing food while being conscious of the needs of other people and the well-being of the planet.”
The book shows us how rice farming in Bali has been practiced for a thousand years (”from seeds to rice-bearing plants to cut stalks that go back into the soil”), and how its cycle is closely connected to that of community life in the island. For the Balinese people, the natural rice cycle involves a hierarchy of water temples; community rituals performed by high priests to thank the goddess of water and the goddess of rice; careful planning of water-sharing schedules to meet everyone’s needs, allowing for a fallow period between growing cycles to keep the fields fertile; the help of ducks to eat worms and bugs and to fertilize the soil naturally with manure; and more. But in the end, the essence of the process, i.e the spirit of a connected community sharing water to ensure a rice harvest and a good life for all, comes through quite clearly (more…)
