How Farmers Cultivate Rice In The Rainy Season

The rainy season starts in October. The high density of rain often takes place in November to January. Farmers usually start to cultivate rice in those months.
I had the opportunity to photograph some rice farmers in Bekasi's rice fields. The location is not the source of rice production in Indonesia. There is only a narrow rice field area left here.

A rice field is located in a swamp area where rain water is collected. The rice plant should be soaked with water. Farmers plow the land in the rice field twice before planting. The first plowing is useful to restore soil density. The soil is left for approximately 3 to 7 days after the first plowing. The second plowing is used to level the soil and clear unproductive weeds.

On other sides of the rice field, farmers sow rice seeds. The rice seeds are scattered in a soil that is prepared.

Places for sowing rice are called beds( Bedengan).

When the rice plants are about 15 centimetres high, they are removed to be planted in the fields.

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This is the soil that is ready to be planted. It has get second plowing. The soil like this is soft or muddy.

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A woman in a cone hat is planting rice. A rice plant is buried in the mud one by one.

During the cultivation process, many organisms and animals live in the rice fields that form a rice field ecosystem. Ducks are very happy at this time because the muddy soil contains a lot of worms. There are also small fish and frogs that live in the swamp area on the mud.There are also snails and dragonflies.

The ducks are having a party on the mud. There are many small animals and grass seeds under the water.

The rice field ecosystem will balance the environment. The rain water that fall in housing area will flow to the rice field so that there will be no flood. Unfortunately, the developments of housing in most area in Indonesia do not pay attention to the balance ecosystem. There are many rice field areas turn into housings and factories. That is why flood often takes place in my area where I live. You can see my post about the rice field today but I can not guarantee this rice field area in the next 5 or 10 years. There may be malls or industrial parks here in the future.

Thanks for reading my post , I hope you enjoy it. For you who live in sub tropical countries may not know how to cultivate rice. Here is the story.