"do not waste the rice you're eating."

That was what one farmer's message to scientists and to his fellow farmers when I joined Dr. Jauhar Ali's field activity in Victoria, Laguna on Thursday, March 21.

Against the brilliant blue sky and the lush green fields, my father's lesson about the importance of food was echoed by this farmer. My dad would tell us that farmers invest blood, sweat, and tears to get as many rice grains as possible from their plants. To show respect to these farmers, we shouldn't be negligent: we were not allowed to burn the rice when we cooked it, we were not allowed to leave the cooked rice to spoil, we were only to put the amount of rice that we could eat on our plate (and so to minimize waste).

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Farmers, during the field activity, did the threshing and the winnowing manually. I wonder how they would do it during a real harvest.

 


 

 



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