When I moved to Bali I confidently expected that I’d
be able to grow my own vegetables. After all, there was plenty
of sunshine and the soil was fertile. I would have help hauling
the compost. What could go wrong?
Six years later my daily harvest averages one chili, two tomatoes
and a moth-eaten kale leaf. On good days I might get a lemon
or a couple of beans as well. Growing food in the tropics
is not easy. It’s either too hot, too wet, too dry or
the bugs eat everything. The soil needs constant nourishment,
watering and protection from sun and wind. A whole generation
of carefully nurtured seedlings can be wiped out overnight
by a browsing insect or a heavy rainstorm. Chickens scratch
up the pumpkin plants. Grasshoppers turn the chard into lace.
Imported vegetable seeds take one look at the thermometer
and wilt into compost.
It’s heartbreaking enough when you’re just a hobby
gardener. Imagine trying to grow vegetables and grain to feed
your family, or for desperately needed cash. I now know that
the people who grow our food have the most important job on
earth. No occupation deserves more respect than farming; we
could not survive without the men and women who enable us
to unthinkingly choose, buy, cook and eat fresh food every
day.
Food… we can’t live without it, yet we take it
as much for granted as the air we breathe. Most of us have
no idea where it comes from, how it’s grown, when it
was harvested or how it gets to our nearest store. Research
shows that the most wholesome foods are those that are grown
locally and in season. So it makes sense to support local
growers every chance we get.
There is no large-scale industrialized farming here. Bali’s
farmers still grow food in family plots, by hand. An increasing
number of small independent growers are producing organic
fruit, rice, vegetables and herbs. It benefits us all to seek
them out and buy from them. Often you find these resources
by word of mouth. My staff mentioned that they had a relationship
with a farmer in Klungkung who had always grown Bali rice
without chemicals; now I get fresh red rice delivered after
each harvest. Gede has mulberry trees on his land in the mountains
and is happy to plant whatever cool-weather crops his clients
want. Oded coordinates a cooperative of organic growers in
Ubud. There are cells springing up everywhere.
I used to pick up a red capsicum at the supermarket and huff,
“Six thousand rupiah!” Now I regard it with wonder
and think, “Only six thousand rupiah…” Because
now I know how hard it is to grow, how many months it takes
to ripen, how it needs just the right amount of sunlight,
how the plant will rot in the ground if it rains too much
and how much compost it needs. Then it is picked, trucked
to Ubud using expensive petrol and the supermarket adds its
profit margin. I wonder how much the farmer gets for all that
labour. We unthinkingly slice it onto our salad with never
a thought that someone had taken five or six months to grow
it... and all the other food in our refrigerators.
A friend brought me a bag of birdseed from South Africa, and
I scattered it around the garden. Forgetting about it until
one hot Sunday morning a few months later, I saw that several
millet plants had taken root, grown and had gone to seed.
I remembered my trip to Rajasthan and decided to make a chapatti.
In the west, this would involve going to the store, buying
a bag of millet flour, taking it home, adding some water,
and cooking the chapatti in a pan on the stove. When you’re
doing it from scratch you have to carefully gather all the
tiny seeds, figure out how to get the husk off, pulverize
the seeds in a mortar and pestle and then cook the chapatti
over a wood fire. It took half the day to make one, and even
then I cheated at the end and cooked it on the stove. As I
ate it, I thought about the women in Rajasthan who had shared
their simple meals with me. I realized that they spent the
whole of their day cultivating millet, harvesting it, threshing
it, grinding it, carrying water for miles in a pot on their
heads to mix it with and then searching out a few dry sticks
to cook it over. And then doing it all over again, day after
day. Feeding the husband, feeding the children, eating last.
We live very privileged lives. Not only do we not have to
raise our own food, we don’t even have to think about
where it comes from.
After that I thought I should get closer to the red rice I
eat here in Bali. Twice now I’ve taken part in planting
heritage Balinese rice at a demonstration farm just outside
of Ubud. There’s an elemental pleasure in stepping through
the cool, sucking mud, poking little holes in it with your
finger and tenderly planting a single blade of rice. In a
chemical-free padi there are tiny spiders walking on the water,
tadpoles, frogs and other creatures to entertain you. But
even so, a couple of hours feels like enough. Wading to the
edge of the field and washing my legs in the irrigation channel,
I am tired from bending for so long. I’m glad my shift
is over. But for millions of rice farmers around the world,
the planting, weeding and reaping never ends.
Realistically, none of us will ever grow significant amounts
of the food we consume. But let’s send a blast of gratitude
to the farmers of the world, and season every meal with awareness
of the human hands that toiled to produce it for us.
If you’d like the experience of working in a chemical-free
rice field near Ubud for a few hours, contact Chakra at <chakra@idepfoundation.org>.
