They hand-plant rice? As in bending over and putting little sprouted rice plants into flooded plains? Wow! I assume that the fields must be terraced on the sides of a hill or somewhere where machinery can't get to. So, they hand-harvest, too? (little sickle, then lay out all the stalks to dry, and then hand-pick the rice off the stems? Some people do it here because they only have a rai or two. But I've never actually seen it done because they live far from here as, well, read on... The landlady's (TLL) oldest aunt - she has to be ninety plus - is bent at 90 degrees from hand harvesting that alongside her borthers, sisters, and wives/husbands for probably forty years and TLL's father and another uncle weren't much better. When the property started to get too big - even with the extended family and paid labourers pitching in - they abandoned that around thirty years ago. [The discussion actually came about because my VPN was set to Vietnam and a holiday ad came on on You Tube showing the typical terraced paddies with women hand-planting rice] Everything is now mechanised - although I think one of the tractors has been dong the same fields for so long it's become sentient - and almost no double-handling apart from the husking of the "good" rice grown for this immediate family, and storing it the rice shed. (The family's personal rice is grown and harvested separately from the "normal" rice which is all sold in bulk. From what I gather - I'm not involved in any of the process apart from as an observer - some arbitrary feeling that it "seems like a good time to strt preparations", some phone calls to contractors are made are made. Local to this house and immediate family: TLL's brothers, a couple of BiLs and sons get the tractors out and dig in the field from last season (they don't burn off) giving off an, er, "interesting" aroma, then they change the discs to chains with two or three old tractor tyres lashed to them and level the field by dragging them behind the tractor, then the hard part they wait for the first decent rain and then go out and using backpack seed spreaders seed about 100 acres of rice fields (I'll take a photo today, I can here one operating as I type, as an edit). They don't use pesticide but will often use fertiliser depending on the soil, this is added during the ploughing. Then sit back and wait for the rain. Harvesters come and leave. That's it. Done. And then money appears some time later. However, the family's personal (about 10 rai) rice plot is done separately sent away in the harvester and returns some time later on the back of two ee-gongs husked, about four-five tonnes, as well as the dried husk. This *whole*farm - accounting for the wider extended family (so surviving aunts and uncles and their kids, grandkids and in-laws) including various other crops like cassava, corn, cucumber, bananas, and tobacco is in the thousands of rai bought over a period of sixty-plus years of back-breaking hard work - and not spending a satang on anything else. Not all of it is contiguous. A lot is spread over sections interspersed with other owners' holdings. But, due to rice in particular all being sold to the rice board (or whomever is the governing, main wholesaler) the owners all work in harmony, with the harvest costs being apportioned to the ratio of land ownership, and the profits also applied using the same ratio. TLL's and her brothers and sisters only work the immediate 300 rai or so surrounding their houses; cousins have cassava, corn, and tobacco as well as rice, one of TLL's sister also grows cucumber and TLL herself has about 10 rai under bananas. All the rest is managed by others as TLL's immediate family all have day jobs. And money just appears in bank accounts once all has been weighed and contractors paid.
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