The people who practice this primitive mode of rice culture are astonishingly indolent. For instance, in 1903 the inhabitants of a certain district in Ceylon raised an unusually large crop of rice. They thereupon sat down to eat it, and raised not a blade of rice the next year. The third year their seed rice was almost all they had left. This was sown, but the crop was largely destroyed by caterpillars. Then these lazy people who had not worked for nearly two years appealed to the government to keep them from famine.
The Skillful Rice Farmer.—Although such occurrences are typical of tropical people, they become less common where more careful methods of rice culture are employed. In many regions, for example, the rice seed is sown in prepared beds. Then after five or six weeks it is painstakingly transplanted to the fields which have been care fully plowed and manured. The rice fields are surrounded by mud embankments so constructed that water can be held there week after week, not standing perfectly still, but gently moving. The beds are occasionally weeded with care and finally the crop is harvested promptly so that the ripe grains may not fall out and be lost. Under good conditions 50 pounds of rice will furnish seed for an acre of trans planted rice, and the yield will be 2500 pounds or fifty-fold. This amount, when combined with some beans or meat to furnish protein, is ample food for five adults a year. Thus a population of 2000 per square mile is possible. On that basis all the people in the United States could be supported on an area equal to New York State.
How the Best Rice Farming Promotes Civilization.—Rice culture is a distinct help in promoting civilization. For one thing, a rice farmer can profitably keep cattle. Even though the animals are small, they can plow the soft soil of the weedless rice fields. As they can be fed on rice straw the scarcity of good grass is not important. They also enable him to use the same fields permanently, for they supply manure, and thus the soil does not become exhausted.
In the next place, since the enrichment of the soil enables the farmer to devote his energies to one particular piece of land he is likely to build new rice beds, take care that he has a good supply of water, and that all his little ditches and dikes are in good order. He finds that the work of one year gives him much benefit the next. Moreover, he cannot go off and leave the rice crop untended, for a few weeks of carelessness will ruin it. All these conditions cause the careful rice-raising people of India, Java, and Indo-China to be more industrious and reliable than other tropical farmers. For the same reasons they are more hopeful and progressive, since they have learned that their efforts are not in vain. Moreover, as the population where rice is raised is much denser than elsewhere, wild animals do less dam age than in other tropical regions, roads can be maintained, and the people can get more stimulus from one another and from outsiders.