How to Harvest Rice

A January highland involved visiting the farm of a former guard with my organization. He retired recently but was gracious enough to invite us all to his home where he gave us a hands-on demonstration on rice harvesting. Since my job entails sitting in an office and brainstorming ways to measure attitudes changes, I haven't had much opportunity to learn the basics of rice farming. This is somewhat unfortunate, given how much rice I eat. However, I will outline the lessons I learned on this day.

1. Plant rice
2. In due time, harvest rice. This entails cutting the stalks, long strands of what almost looks like hay. You tie a handful together and then cut it near the root.
3. Let it dry for several days in the sun.
4. Thrash the stalks against a hard surface. You do this with a tarp on the ground. The rice is loosed and falls from the stalk to the tarp. At this point, it's in a little "shell" or "seed hull" The unwanted stalks are later feed to animals.
5. Run the rice through a mill-like devise, which is hand cranked. This "machine" blowing air on the rice separates the grass and the chaff from the rice particles. 
6. The rice is dried for several more days.
7. Take the rice to a local miller who has a machine that will break the rice out of the "shell" or "seed hull" into the little white grains that we all know. You can supposedly do this by hand, but it's a lot of work.

After a few hours of "hard work," we enjoyed a delicious lunch of Cambodian curry and rice noodles. We walked around the little farm, harvested a few green coconuts for their juice, saw the chickens and the growing herbs and allowed the neighbors to be amused by our presence. 

Statistically speaking, 80% of Cambodians are rural farmers. The majority grow their own rice. Rice is consumed with every single meal. In Khmer, the verb "to eat" is directly translated "eat rice." You can't separate eating from rice. There is nothing  more closely aligned with the human existence or with basic human needs, than rice. There's no comparison in Western cultures. Bread does not even come close. For those of us who live in Cambodia, we learn quickly to stoically eat rice, a funny little grain that holds the very essence of life. And when I leave Cambodia, without any doubt, I will still eat rice.