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My Experience as a Rice Farmer

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Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#81

Post by srean »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #70
dilawar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ki…

Honestly the rice varieties in India should be promoted and protected more. The diversity and health benefits of these varieties is immense.

This is so important. Kerala in particular had a treasure trove of varieties, some well suited to low rainfall, resistant to local pests. I am sure other states had/has such diversity too, I am just not knowledgeable enough.

These genotypes are being lost to industrial mono-cropping. The government is doing nothing about it.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#82

Post by lukan »

adrianN wrote: post #51
lukan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. Have you lived with kids in a village and also in cities to see the difference in reality? I did and am moving back to the village now.

I grew up in a city and my wife grew up in a village. We now live in a city and don’t own a car.

But you don't have kids yet?

It makes a pretty big difference. Yes, the opportunities in the city are bigger for everything, but so are the dangers. The amount of crazy people. The effort involved in getting to a nice and safe place where the kids can just run around without you having to watch them every second. Those places also exist in some cities, but way too few. So great that you don't have a car, (I mean it) car free places in cities I do enjoy, there are just not many of them.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#83

Post by adrianN »

lukan wrote: post #82
adrianN wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a city and my wife grew up in a village. We now live in a city and don’t own a car.

But you don't have kids yet? It makes a pretty big difference. Yes, the opportunities in the city are bigger for everything, but so are the dangers. The amount of crazy people. The effort involved in getting to a nice and safe place where the kids can just run around without you having to watch them every second. Those places also exist in some cities, but way too few. So great that you don't have a car, (I mean it)…

I have two three year olds. Parks where they can run around with relaxed supervision are not far. A big park is close enough that they can walk the distance and in less than half an hour by bike we can reach a forest and four or five other parks.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#84

Post by olalonde »

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 was at my wife's hometown for CNY and it seems her mother still does everything by hand. Pretty impressive... not sure how long I'd last doing that kind of hard labor. It does smell nice.

https://gist.github.com/olalonde/8a905bcd87e3bfcd4f6143a337e...

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#85

Post by aurareturn »

olalonde wrote: post #84
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 was at my wife's hometown for CNY and it seems her mother still does everything by hand. Pretty impressive... not sure how long I'd last doing that kind of hard labor. It does smell nice. https://gist.github.com/olalonde/8a905bcd87e3bfcd4f6143a337e...

Yea that rice mill machine is similar to what I remember. Our village didn't have one so some guy would show up in harvest season to do it for every house in the village.

I can tell by the houses in your wife's village that their area was likely wealthier than ours growing up. Our houses looked more like this: https://imgur.com/a/Pc9LuKF

When I was a kid, it felt like there were only 2 or 3 villages total in my area since our parents didn't allow us to go too far. As a visiting adult, I found out that there were hundreds of similar villages in the region. Most of these villages are generally empty nowadays as people moved to cities. However, I heard from locals that some younger people are beginning to return to villages and raise their kids there.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#86

Post by FlyingSnake »

vintermann wrote: post #79
FlyingSnake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in similar environment in rural central India and I (half)jokingly say farming was my first real job. We rarely planted rice, but I have vivid memory of helping my father plant the rice saplings in the muddy puddles in my farm. I am always skeptical of urban people wanting to move back to little villages to do farming. Farming is a back-breaking and a tough job. You are exposed to all the vagaries of nature…

Well, those who quit their jobs and open coffee shops almost certainly make a bad choice for themselves economically and work/ life balance wise... But they do wonderful things for their community, and - a questionable benefit to society but a huge benefit to some - real estate prices. People love these places. They capture a tiny fraction of the value they create, if we look at it in cold terms. That can't really be…

I meant it as a pipe-dream that people jump into without knowing the hidden asymmetries. Farming of any kind is hard and learning that specific skillset is necessary to succeed.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#87

Post by orthoxerox »

fer wrote: post #11
anonymous908213 wrote: post #2

This was mostly a nice read, I do enjoy these kinds of slice-of-life blogs. I think it might have been a bit better without making claims about the economic future and history of rice farming or whatever, if the author doesn't even speak the language it's unlikely they have any real insight to offer and whatever shallow information they got off a random Youtube video is liable to be spreading misinformation that misl…

How is that communistic? The reasoning behind Gentan was that a landless peasantry was more likely to revolt. It's not dissimilar to pre-1929 kulaks, though the kulaks were encouraged/enabled to become a relatively wealthy/middle class peasantry who employed people and were directly involved in the production without owning large swathes of land, acting as a kind of a social dampener against a revolution. Unsurprisin…

Kulaks were the stated problem, the real problem were the middling farmers. If you're a smallholder with a surplus of land, your production is very elastic.

You can plant cash crops and sell them to buy industrial products. Or you can plant crops that boost your quality of life directly: fruit, vegetables, tobacco, animal fodder.

The "price scissors" (low price of wheat, high price of goods) meant that middling farmers stopped planting wheat that the USSR needed to feed the cities and to pay for imports. To make the peasants plant wheat again the Soviets took away their land in the name of economy of scale (collectivization), but the real goal was to limit the size of personal plots.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#88

Post by teruakohatu »

sdevonoes wrote: post #56
aledevv wrote: post #46

> Doing a day of manual labour, chatting shit, then going for the onsen and some BBQ and beers is far better than grinding away at some enterprise SaaS that will probably disappear in a few years. I particularly agree with this statement. I don't know why manual work has been so denigrated over the last century. We believed that office labor was more important and healthier than manual labor. I don't think so. As a d…

I’d love to do manual labor as long as: I have a decent house, decent health insurance, can afford decent food/stuff, can afford taking sabbaticals, can afford getting sick and not losing my income, can afford decent education for kids, etc. Unfortunately, many of us are chained to the modern way of life.

Don’t forget doing only enough manual labour not to get hurt, killed or develop a chronic condition.

You can make a lot of money doing many skilled manual jobs in my country. Trades are highly paid and there is not enough supply. Better money than software development.

They often wreck their backs, or develop other chronic conditions. The successful ones stop doing manual work by the time they are in their 40s and move to running their own businesses employing 20 year olds.

A friend of mine just lost a family member a few weeks ago. He slipped on a roof.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#89

Post by olalonde »

aurareturn wrote: post #85
olalonde wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at my wife's hometown for CNY and it seems her mother still does everything by hand. Pretty impressive... not sure how long I'd last doing that kind of hard labor. It does smell nice. https://gist.github.com/olalonde/8a905bcd87e3bfcd4f6143a337e...

Yea that rice mill machine is similar to what I remember. Our village didn't have one so some guy would show up in harvest season to do it for every house in the village. I can tell by the houses in your wife's village that their area was likely wealthier than ours growing up. Our houses looked more like this: https://imgur.com/a/Pc9LuKF When I was a kid, it felt like there were only 2 or 3 villages total in my area…

Oh, I assumed you meant a powered machine.

I believe it's pretty quiet here too outside of CNY, although there is at least one active school nearby. Nice to hear some younger people are returning. It must be nice for kids to grow up in this kind of environment.

Re: My Experience as a Rice Farmer

#90

Post by aurareturn »

olalonde wrote: post #89
aurareturn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea that rice mill machine is similar to what I remember. Our village didn't have one so some guy would show up in harvest season to do it for every house in the village. I can tell by the houses in your wife's village that their area was likely wealthier than ours growing up. Our houses looked more like this: https://imgur.com/a/Pc9LuKF When I was a kid, it felt like there were only 2 or 3 villages total in my area…

Oh, I assumed you meant a powered machine. I believe it's pretty quiet here too outside of CNY, although there is at least one active school nearby. Nice to hear some younger people are returning. It must be nice for kids to grow up in this kind of environment.

Oh I didn't realize that some people would interpret that machine as powered by electricity.

Our village didn't get electricity until the 90s, I think. I do remember having electricity growing up, and even a small TV. By the time I emigrated, some households had refrigerators.

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