Plant it!

10-05-2008...

'Tis the end of season for the cultivation of Baras Brunei, and after a really good Pusu harvest it's time to cultivate other varieties of rice to fill the off-season gap. The off-season period is the opportune time to cultivate the faster growing/yielding rice varieties such as the IR64 Super Indonesian rice (medium grain) and IR74 Filipino rice (Beras Laila genus), both can be harvested after three months of planting and can be cultivated anytime during the year regardless of the season as long as water is available.

Continued cultivation during season intervals also helps curb overgrowth, meaning less work needed when it comes to prepare for the next Baras Brunei season.




With Brunei's considerable wet climate, there is ample rain for cultivating rice all year round. But as I've mentioned before, farming Baras Pusu outside it's normal cultivation season (Oct-Apr) will result in crop failure, as had been experimented by some of the neighbouring farmers.

Availability of water is crucial at the very most during rice planting. Just as plants go, the transplanted seedlings need to be kept sufficiently moist until they have grown hardy enough to sustain on their own (about 1 month+).

Seedlings also need to be planted firmly into the soil in clusters of 3-5 to prevent strong winds from uprooting them. Planting them in clusters will also lower the chance of crop failure. Planting in square foot grids makes it easier to move around when it comes time to fertilise and harvest the padi.

Tilling the land

Two seasons have passed since our first harvest, which yielded approximately half a ton of Pusu rice. Not a bad start considering only a quarter of the paddy field was utilised. The time it took to prepare the once abandoned paddy fields went even longer than had expected.

Overgrown with creeping vines, weeds and rumput lalang, it took several weeks of tromping/thrashing, spraying herbicide and burning before the soil was finally ready to be plowed and limed.

It cost $200 to hire tractors to tromp down the hardy vegetation and god knows how much carbon footprint was created by all the burning. All the more reason to continue cultivating the land after every harvest so that it will not be necessary to repeat the thrashing and burning cycle.

Farming rice does require the devotion of a full time job to be both ecologically and economically sustainable, and smart farming is the smart way to do it.

Rice farming procedures: A sort of systematic approach

August

• Preparing the Banih padi or paddy seeds for sowing is done by soaking the seeds in watery solution for 48hrs, by which time they should germinate.

• Once germination has occured, the ideal way to samai (sow) the seeds is by scattering them sparsely on a plot of plowed soil (possibly a nursery) and not to let them bunch up so much that it makes them difficult to dig out for transplanting. A better alternative is to sow the seeds in trays which will help facilitate transporting and transplanting of seedlings to the sawah (paddy field). The soil for raising the seedlings is mixed with ampas padi (padi husks) from milled padi.
  

• Transplanting of seedlings to the sawah is then carried out after 1 month of sowing.

• After a week from transplanting, fertilising with urea is then carried out to encourage the growth of the seedlings. This however also encourages the growth of weeds. Hence when the weeds start to sprout, Amien herbicide is sprayed to suppress the weeds. Feeding is most important and should be carried out monthly one month after transplanting by using Vitagrow organic fertiliser. Halfway thru the cultivation period (3 months for baras Pusu), fertilising once with fruit enhancing fertiliser (npk 12-12-17 + 2) is carried out to feed the by now already seeding padi.

• Six months later around about April, baras Pusu is ready to be katam (harvesting) once the seeds have ripened and turned yellowish brown. Family and friends come in rejoice to join in the mengatam activity.
  

Baras Brunei

Baras Adan, Bario and Pusu, among others, are native rice of Borneo. There is a popular misconception that these varieties of rice to be of 'local' baras Brunei. The claim to the moniker may be partly true though, since they are also traditionally grown in Brunei.

These traditional varieties of small grain rice, mysteriously, can only be cultivated once a year during the rainy season with a growing period of six months (October - April). Even with the climate change and unpredictable weather conditions that we are currently experiencing (blessed with abundance of rain on supposedly dry months), growing them off season will produce very little crop...if any. Hence, their seasonality and high demand makes it rather pricey; $12 se-gantang (3.5 kilos) freshly milled, compared to the subsidised supermarket price of $10-$11 per 10 kilos for Thai fragrant rice (baras tempatan $13.50/10kg sack).

Baras Brunei is an acquired taste. This is because the rice grain is small and some varieties are sticky compared to the imported Thai rice varieties. In the olden days when meals weren't as lavishly diverse as today's, Baras Brunei or Baras Kabun were simply eaten with dried salted fish or ikan masin. This was the staple food of many people in the olden days but probably a delicacy to many today (albeit served with other dishes). Some like it and others don't, and some even swear by its therapeutic properties. There was a story about a Singaporean who suffers from the 'popular' modern diseases; hypertension, diabetes etc. He came for a visit to Brunei and during his lengthy stay he acquired the taste for baras Pusu. Long story short with Allah SWT's will, his ailments receded and he's been 'importing' baras Brunei to Singapore eversince. Wallahua'lam Bissawab.

Theoretically, freshly harvested and milled rice is nutritionally better than rice that have been subjected to post-harvest processes required for export and the constant periodical pesticide fumigation while being kept in storage.

Fore! word...

Finally! A chance to put in the first few grains of words. Due to anticipated time constraints, updates to this blog will be most infrequent and very far apart. This blog was created for the purpose of documenting the events and inner workings of our small-medium rice farm (and the surrounding farming community) for later perusal or reference.

It all began about 3 years ago when the Department of Agriculture, under the Ministry of Industry and Primary Resources of His Majesty's government, set motion a project to re-activate the once abandoned Wasan paddy fields and grant tenure to the residents of Mukim Pengkalan Batu and the Royal Brunei Armed Forces retirees/veterans. Farmers were each granted 2 - 5 acres of land for the purpose of rice farming. The popular types of rice traditionally grown in Wasan Paddy fields, or Brunei for that matter, are the Adan and Pusu varieties. Both genuses are of the once-a-year harvest variety, but with the introduction of new paddy varieties it is possible to harvest rice twice a year or quarterly, depending on the paddy variety as well as weather conditions.