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My Experience as a Rice Farmer

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Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#31

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

aurareturn wrote: post #20
troupo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My one hope for AI, robotics, self driving cars, is that they can enable people in cities to migrate back to rural places. Why? Honest question. A kid in a town/city has access to a billion opportunities many of which exist only because there are enough people interested.

Why? Honest question. I don't necessarily think everyone should move out of cities to go back to living in rural areas and villages. I want it so that living outside of the city more viable than it is today because there are very real benefits to living there. In a village, everyone knows everyone. Kids play with each other and run around freely. Every house protects all the kids and help each other. Everyone trusts…

> In a village, everyone knows everyone. Kids play with each other and run around freely. Every house protects all the kids and help each other. Everyone trusts everyone.

Seems like a recipe for rampant child abuse.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#32

Post by aurareturn »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #31
aurareturn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Honest question. I don't necessarily think everyone should move out of cities to go back to living in rural areas and villages. I want it so that living outside of the city more viable than it is today because there are very real benefits to living there. In a village, everyone knows everyone. Kids play with each other and run around freely. Every house protects all the kids and help each other. Everyone trusts…

> In a village, everyone knows everyone. Kids play with each other and run around freely. Every house protects all the kids and help each other. Everyone trusts everyone. Seems like a recipe for rampant child abuse.

I never felt unsafe as a kid or abused in any way although my mom would make me memorize our village's name and location in case I get abducted while playing with my friends. We'd often go over to neighboring villages to play because some of our friends from school lived in a different village. We played until dawn and then went home to have dinner.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#33

Post by esseph »

TrackerFF wrote: post #15

It is probably a nice experience to have, but imagine your body after doing this for 50-60 years. You're one serious back injury away from being unemployed.

Much like carpentry, or electrical work, or concrete, or just about any of the trades.

Any labor throughout human history.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#34

Post by thaumasiotes »

TurdF3rguson wrote: post #28
thaumasiotes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether that's a big deal or not depends on the person, their finances, how much rice the family eats, etc etc. There's a nasty interaction among those concerns: as the basic staple food of the diet, rice is consumed in larger amounts by poorer people who can't afford real food, like meat. Which means that a spike in the price of rice is effectively targeted at people who can't afford to substitute other foods.

Corn is still cheaper. If you're really poor in Asia you're eating corn (and complaining about it).

If you go into a Chinese supermarket, it will quickly become apparent that the default cooking oil is corn oil.

I find this an interesting contrast with the United States, where the default cooking oil is Canola oil (if you're a person looking to cook your own food; this is the sense in which the Chinese default is corn oil) or soybean oil (if you're a company looking to sell packaged food in grocery stores). As far as I'm aware, traditional China would have had sesame oil and maybe soybean oil, and certainly not corn oil. The advantage of corn oil must be the price.

But if corn oil is so cheap, why does the cheapest oil available in the US seem to be soybean oil?

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#35

Post by sudo_cowsay »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #31
aurareturn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Honest question. I don't necessarily think everyone should move out of cities to go back to living in rural areas and villages. I want it so that living outside of the city more viable than it is today because there are very real benefits to living there. In a village, everyone knows everyone. Kids play with each other and run around freely. Every house protects all the kids and help each other. Everyone trusts…

> In a village, everyone knows everyone. Kids play with each other and run around freely. Every house protects all the kids and help each other. Everyone trusts everyone. Seems like a recipe for rampant child abuse.

Doesn't happen that much. Possibly the environment in which people grow up in is so free and kind. Sort of like Hawaii's aloha spirit (search it up).

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#36

Post by dilawar »

aurareturn wrote: post #5

As a child, I grew up in a village in China and our family farmed rice. It was mostly my mom who was doing the farming while my dad worked in the city. Some things I remember: * Seeing hired buffalos tilling our fields * Playing with frogs and catching tadpoles in the fields * Someone with a machine that removes the husks would come to our village during harvest * The smell of rice fields. I recently smelled it again…

I grew up in North India, close to Ramganga river (Jim Corbet park is on this river). We grew rice in addition to sugar cane.

The smell of paddy (and also of large quantity of cooked rice) is absolutely soothing for me and it brings back memory.

During my grandfather time, it was very common for a crab to grab your fingers when you are planting the paddy. My father would chase turtles and large frogs when he was a kid.

When I was a kid, the crabs and turtles were gone but frogs were pretty abundant. In last twenty years, there are hardly any frogs left. Earthworms are also under stress.

The Japanese style of planting paddy wasn't very common in India before green revolution. Then we had a some new varieties that took over almost all old varieties for a simple reason for yield. My grandmother used to complain about a lost variety a lot. Apparently it had such a strong aroma that whole village would know what rice you have cooked. Glad to see more efforts preserving old varieties [1].

[1] https://ruralindiaonline.org/article/let-them-eat-rice

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#37

Post by vkou »

sheept wrote: post #23
aurareturn wrote: post #5

As a child, I grew up in a village in China and our family farmed rice. It was mostly my mom who was doing the farming while my dad worked in the city. Some things I remember: * Seeing hired buffalos tilling our fields * Playing with frogs and catching tadpoles in the fields * Someone with a machine that removes the husks would come to our village during harvest * The smell of rice fields. I recently smelled it again…

> My one hope for AI, robotics, self driving cars, is that they can enable people in cities to migrate back to rural places. Wouldn't it be better, at least for the Earth, for everyone to live in cities? This way, more of the world can remain fairly untouched by humans, and it could still remain easy accessible from the city for recreational purposes. The solarpunk ideal of living a rural life requires more road infr…

A very large fraction of land (~50%) is currently used to grow biomass to feed 8 billion humans. Nothing about that land is 'natural' - it's a carefully engineered environment that's quite hostile to animal life.

The land that people live on, whether it's in a city, a suburb, or in a rural manner is a rounding error compared to those demands.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#39

Post by bwv848 »

sheept wrote: post #23
aurareturn wrote: post #5

As a child, I grew up in a village in China and our family farmed rice. It was mostly my mom who was doing the farming while my dad worked in the city. Some things I remember: * Seeing hired buffalos tilling our fields * Playing with frogs and catching tadpoles in the fields * Someone with a machine that removes the husks would come to our village during harvest * The smell of rice fields. I recently smelled it again…

> My one hope for AI, robotics, self driving cars, is that they can enable people in cities to migrate back to rural places. Wouldn't it be better, at least for the Earth, for everyone to live in cities? This way, more of the world can remain fairly untouched by humans, and it could still remain easy accessible from the city for recreational purposes. The solarpunk ideal of living a rural life requires more road infr…

And the best way for Earth is we all migrate to Mars aboard Elon Musk's spaceship.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#40

Post by ErroneousBosh »

indemnity wrote: post #19
aurareturn wrote: post #5

As a child, I grew up in a village in China and our family farmed rice. It was mostly my mom who was doing the farming while my dad worked in the city. Some things I remember: * Seeing hired buffalos tilling our fields * Playing with frogs and catching tadpoles in the fields * Someone with a machine that removes the husks would come to our village during harvest * The smell of rice fields. I recently smelled it again…

I grew up in a similar environment, similar trajectory, but in Africa. Dad was a teacher in a rural school, mum stayed at home. Until I went to school I would stay outside all day with my friends, playing in and around the rivers and dams, making our own fun with abandoned cars and rusted out farming equipment. Our school had one computer, and I was lucky enough to get to use it after hours from time to time. I would…

This is rural Scotland in the late 1970s / early 1980s.

I'd like my small son to have the same opportunities that I had, instead of a school where the playground has lots of very carefully manufactured play equipment and they get to sit and look at iPads instead of working out for themselves how to program a BBC Micro.

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