While traveling through the island of Bali, I was surrounded by rice.
Meals, hikes and daily acquaintances all revolved around this glutinous crop. But I didn’t come to realize how important it was until my last morning on the island, over a breakfast of rice porridge.
Indonesia is the world’s third largest producer of rice. With 100 billion square meters of rice cultivation, the total number of rice fields in the country can fill one-quarter of the state of California.
And growing the crop is no easy feat; it requires laboring long, collaborative hours in the fields. So whether it is the farmer picking the stalks in the hot sun, or the vendor who is selling the rice and struggling to make a profit, the Indonesians work hard to produce their biggest cash crop.
These photographs capture the arduous labor associated with maintaining the crop, but they also capture the beauty of open space and open farmland, which is often lost in our modern American lives.
