May 1994

Rice Journeys

By Smita Patel, California and Anandhi, Madras

Legends say it came from the sky, magically transported from the Gods to earth, for the souls of a young planet destined to raise a very big family. Today this homely grass/grain, rice, has become the starchy staple for 2.5 billion people. The 1993 world crop-one trillion pounds, or 200 pounds for every human! In our rice "journey," you will visit a farm in California growing Indian basmati, meet a Sri Lankan rice farmer and an American Indian rice-gatherer and enjoy a feast of Hindu rice lore.

Basmati in California, By Smita Patel

I reached the farm with my father on a brilliant, clear morning. The deep blue sky was spotted with fluffy, white clouds. Lundberg Family Farms' 3,200 acres of fallow paddy fields stretched in all directions. Wild birds played in the dead "straw," churning it-it seemed to me-as efficiently as any fancy cultivator and fertilizing it for free.

I was met by John Neal, the farm's quality-assurance manager. Lundberg, besides being famous for its commitment to organic farming, is the largest US grower of exotic Asian rices. The finding and growing of new varieties of rice are important to them. Every available surface in Neal's office was piled with bags of rice of different shapes and colors. One of his main duties is to grow and study the different foreign varieties of rice procured by Harlan Lundberg. Harlan is one of four brothers who inherited the farm from their father, who journeyed to California in the 1930s, abandoning the devastating "dust bowl" of the Midwest. "He had a real love for the land," Neal said. "He really valued it because he saw it blow away." Today, Lundberg Farms produces 40,000,000 pounds of rice per year.

As we drove out into the fields, we found ourselves surrounded by paddy stretching to distant mountains. Tracts were waiting to be planted. Some were green with grass that had sprung up in response to the rains. Others were black where neighboring farms burned the straw from the previous year's harvest. The Lundbergs never burn their straw, Neal explained. Instead, they work it back into the soil where it decomposes, helping to enrich the soil and preventing it from becoming too compacted. According to Neal, rice farmers in Asia reuse most of the straw as a bedding for animals or as a source of fuel.

Our first stop was in a section of field where Neal tries out different varieties of rice. Although research and development is central to their work, they don't spend much time trying to hybridize different kinds of rice. Instead, they plant different strains and then look for those mutations that climatized the best. I discreetly inquired about their Basmati rice-keenly aware that the farmers of Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh, its legendary home, swear it can never be grown elsewhere and bear the name. Without my prompting, Neal openly admitted it was not possible for them to grow a Basmati which would taste and smell exactly the same as that grown in India for many reasons, but he smiled and said they get it quite close.

Although the brothers have not been to India to gather rices, Harlan travels to Asia, Africa and elsewhere to gather exotic strains. They originally got their basmati from a commerial rice bank and grow a number of Indicas that originate in the Asian subcontinent. Harlan later told me that India has nurtured a great range of rice strains, a fact he linked to India's cultural diversity. "I really like the fact that Indians enjoy a variety of rices instead of confining themselves to one," he said.

The fields were teeming with fowl. Ducks darted skyward at our approach while Great Blue herons held solitary vigil further away. White-plumed egrets sat in startling silhouette against the patched brown and green earth. These birds are important, Neil shared. When the fields are flooded, they paddle around in search of food, breaking down and distributing the old straw. They fertilize the fields and help keep the rice free of insects. This is particularly important in the organic fields which make up 40 percent of the Lundberg business.

Upstairs in the mill, the air is pungent with the sweet scent of rice. Heavy machinery here husks, cleans and sorts the grain. Downstairs, more machines measure and bag the rice. Across the street is the factory which produces a wonderful variety of other rice products.

The Lundberg family has come a long way since their start in the 1960's when their main buyers were long-haired, hippie health-food store owners, "turning on" a meat-eating nation to a "peace-giving" grain. And though it was not a Lundberg strategy to import and grow Indian and Sri Lankan rices to supply the 900,000 immigrants from those countries who now call America home, I couldn't help seeing a "higher design" at work. Both Neal and Harlan had told me they want to visit India. Before we left, my father invited our new "rice friends" to visit our whenever they made the journey.

Rice Lore

Although it is still unknown exactly when and how people started growing rice, archaeologists have uncovered evidence that rice was present in Indian civilizations 8,000 bce, according to Tuk-Tuk Kumar, author of The History of Rice in India. She argues that rice husks used to temper clay pottery at Koldihawa and Mahagara sites indicate that a domesticated rice was grown at that time. Other researchers document a slender, wild strain called Indica growing on Himalayan slopes about 4,000 years ago. Extraordinary in yield, nutrition, resistance to disease, adaptability and savor, rice migrated around the globe with little promotion. Today, India's prized aromatic rice, Basmati, is found as far from its birthplace as Kenya and California.

Hinduism's ancient scriptures have many references to rice. Kumar notes that the Yajur Veda describes the preparation of rice cakes as a ritual offering. In the Atharva Veda, rice, along with barley, are described as "healing balms, the sons of heaven who never die." Smritis tell how Goddess Devi Lalithambika is known to be especially fond of payasa annam, sweet rice. Indeed, husked rice is always present in even the simplest Hindu puja as one of the offerings. So revered is rice that, if mixed with turmeric powder, it can substitute if necessary for costly items for the murthis such as dress, ornaments, even flowers.

Rice is also a potent symbol of auspiciousness and fertility. South Indians call rice Anna Lakshmi. Anna means "food" and Lakshmi is the Goddess of prosperity. From ancient times, Dhanya Lakshmi has been depicted holding a few sheaves of rice in her hand. The most special offering to Lord Ganesha is the modakam, a ball of sweet coconut/jaggery fill, covered with a thick rice paste. The first food fed a child is rice. In Rajasthan, when a woman first enters her husband's house, a measure of rice is kept on the threshold. This she scatters through her new home inviting prosperity and happiness. In South India, raw rice, mixed with kumkum to redden it, is known as mangala akshadai and showered over newlyweds. At a harvest festival, Thai Pongal, rice is ceremoniously cooked. Surya, God of the sun, is worshiped and the nature spirits are thanked.

But this reverence for rice is not restricted to India. The Angkabau of Sumatra use special rice plants to denote the Rice Mother, Indoea Padi. The people of Indochina treat ripened rice in bloom like a pregnant woman, capturing its spirit in a basket. Rice growers of the Malay Peninsula often treat the wife of the cultivator as a pregnant woman for the first three days after storing the rice. Even the Sundanese of West Java, who consider themselves Muslims, believe rice is the personification of the rice goddess Dewi Sri. In Thailand, when you call the family to a meal you say, "Eat rice." In Japan, to goad children to eat all their rice, grains are called "little Buddhas," and girls are told every grain they leave on the plate will become a pock mark on the face of their future husband. In China, the word for rice is the same as food. The Toradja tribals of Indonesia consider rice to be of heavenly origin. So hallowed was the grain, that it was taboo to plant any other crop in the rice fields. The Ahnishinabe Native American Indian tribe of North America say their ancestors saw in visions tracts of wild rice. So they migrated to the central part of USA/Canada, found the rice, and to this day, gather and trade it for their livelihood.

Dietetically, rice is cherished as a cholesterol-free, protein/calorie cornucopia. Most people in Asia obtain 60 to 80 percent of their calories from rice. Rice becomes a "complete protein," equivalent to beef protein, when eaten with beans or lentils because the enzymes in rice help to process the proteins in the lentil. As a result, rice is rarely served in India without some kind of lentil or dal.

Rice is prepared in many different ways. In the Far East, it is often squeezed into noodles. In South India, it is soaked overnight and made into fluffy idlis or thin, crepe-like dosas. In Northern India, it is often cooked with sweetened milk to form kheer. People in Gujarat celebrate Sharad Purnima by soaking flattened rice in sweet milk which they drink at night. Drinking this "dood-powa" on this night is said to protect health. In Northern India, people celebrate the festival of Divali with sugar candy, batasha, and khil, puffed rice.

In addition to its value as a food, rice serves other purposes in Asia. In Japan, every home is floored with elegant rice mats, called tatami. Villagers wear rice straw sandals, and the whole nation unwinds daily on a delicate rice wine, sake.In rural India, cooked rice is used as a glue. A verse in ancient Tamil literature says women would dress up in elegant sarees starched with rice kanji, the excess water drained after the rice is cooked. Rice flour is used by housewives to make the beautiful religious kolam designs each dawn in front of their homes-and at temples for festivals-to ward off negative energies. Ants are allowed to eat the kolam as a natural cycle is fulfilled in a display human kindness for the most defenseless of creatures.

Rice Caper

"Multinational corporations are appropriating seeds and plant varieties that have traditionally belonged to developing nations, making modifications, patenting them and selling them back to the poorer country [like India] at much higher prices," writes journalist P. Sainath. The hybrid seeds supplant tens of thousands of reliable ancient folk varieties around the world. "The patents regime is to gain control of a nation covertly," adds M.D. Nandjundswamy.

Bats, Bugs & Friendly Birds

Mudiyanse attended the International Seminar of Indigenous People in Kuala Lumpur last fall, barefoot. A rice farmer from Sri Lanka and descendant of the ancient queen Kuweni who ruled Lanka 2,500 years ago, he maintains that the old farming methods and simple agrarian lifestyle are enlightened, not primitive. He remembers when his island had 123 varieties of rice, which have now been reduced to three strains developed by modern agriculturalists. But, as reported in an article in the New Strait Times: "Mudiyanse said the old traditional varieties had long stems so they blew in the wind, making it very difficult for insects to land on them. There was hardly a pest problem and no need for pesticides. Furthermore, the old strains had big droopy leaves which shaded the soil underneath and prevented weeds from growing. Also, cactus milk would be poured into the fields and crushed coconut placed in a the corners to attract a kind of red brown bird which fed on paddy bugs and worms. Rodents were controlled by burning a special kind of root at the four corners of the field. The farmers had special plots of paddy for the birds at the end of each field. The birds knew which was their rice and which belonged to the farmers. The land was fertilized by planting the leguminous mee trees. Fruits of this tree would attract fruit bats and bat droppings which are rich in nitrogen and an important source of fertilizer.

Min-o-min

Winona Laduke is of the Ahnishinabe tribe of Native American Indians. She shared in a Seeds of Change interview: "I live on the White Earth reservation. I work mostly on the land. In our language, most nouns are animate, whether it is the word for corn, for wild rice, min-o-min, or stone. Having spirit and standing on its own, I'm very careful when I harvest it because I must reckon with that spirit. In our culture, it is because you are respectful when you harvest is how you ensure that you are able to continue harvesting. It is not because you're smart or clever, it's because you're respectful and you are worthy of receiving. In our culture, before rice, I offer ah-say-mah, tobacco, to that plant or that rice. Min-o-min was given to us by our Creator."