(Note to mom and dad: yes i'm walking barefoot in a paddy field, but endemic schistosomiasis in Indonesia is limited to Sulawesi.)
As an agri-economist, I've always regarded paddy cultivation as one of my areas of relative ignorance. If there was one thing I knew too little about which feeds millions of people worldwide, it was rice: rice growing, rice transplanting, rice cultivation in lowlands (in continuously puddled fields) vis-a-vis rice cultivation in highlands (dry areas and only rainfed), rice harvest, post-harvest handling such as threshing, rice dehusking etc.
I still know very little. But since last month I feel like I know a little something. At least.
IRRI, the International Rice Research Institute, has these nice learning modules on rice and soil fertility on their website and a final online quiz. And so I tested myself and found that I aced the quiz.
Paddy cultivation is very special and distinct from other forms of agriculture. One of the most interesting things to learn was that under anaerobic conditions, in puddled fields, the sort of electro-chemical processes in the soil are not at all the same as under aerobic conditions. The nitrogen cycle, for example, is quite different. Wheras under normal (aerobic) conditions, urea fertilizer is typically lost through leeching or nitrification, under anaerobic condition it is more probably lost through volatilization (gaseous loss).
Following this preparation, I thought I was ready for a workshop with rice farmers on soil fertility and soil testing. That's what we did on a very windy day in Lombok. Walking through puddled rice fields, making holes with an Auger borer and sampling soil.
And I was pleased with the result. Of course the farmers have all the practical experience and i have none. Everything I know and learned comes from studying and reading documents.
But I did feel like I knew very many things about rice soil fertility and about growing healthy rice plants that the farmers didn't. In fact, I knew so much (admittedly not all of it would have been practical for the farmers) and found there was so little time to explain it to them, that I didn't even get to deliver most of the stuff I knew...
But I'm excited about my work. When I was 25, after riding rickshaw for 1.5 years, I enrolled in an agricultural Masters program at Uni. I've never looked back since.
Working with farmers in developing countries is fascinating and I'm happy to have found what I want to do, finally, at the age of 29. (That's not so bad considering my dad is still figuring out at 68 if he should have become a carpenter! I would have liked that... or for him to be a gardener.... instead he became a white-collar worker, aarrgh!).
I know I will take a break from time to time from this, because not everything about development work is great; and also to enjoy the luxuries of living in an industrialized country or to see my sister start her own little family.
But this thing here is my calling and it is my safest bet for ever becoming a fulfilled and happy young professional.
