Savor Every Grain

When I was in Cambodia, I passed a family one day eating on small stools on the sidewalk, as is the custom. A small boy, I would guess 3 years old, was holding his bowl by his chin. Unable to wield the chopsticks just yet, he was scooping the rice into his mouth with his fingers. I noted that he did so until he had scraped every last grain from the bowl, and then put it down with a sigh.

I saw a lot of rice fields in Vietnam and Cambodia. Now I have seen rice paddy terraces in Sapa, Vietnam and China, and it gives me a whole new perspective on eating rice. As I ride the 22-hour bus and train from Lijiang to Panzhehua and Chengdu, we pass an unending spectacle of steep, high mountains plunging into deep valley villages. These mountains are covered with rice terraces in the seemingly most impossible places. I wouldn't think there was enough oxygen that high to even grow rice.

I have marveled at the vast horizon to horizon wheat, rye, corn, and soybean fields in the U.S, in Kansas, along the deserts of the Columbia Basin in Washington State, and even the rolling volcanic dunes of Eastern Washington, with its quilted pattern of fallow fileds, newly sprouted winter wheat, waving mature grain, and the stuble of harvested stalks with golden glow in the setting sun. It often made me wonder how there was enough grain produced to feed the world, and especially curious about the production process of rice. Well, now I have seen it, and it blows my mind.

Whereas U.S. crops are planted and harvested by machines, rice is produced entirely by hand, except for a few small harvester machines that can fit in the paddies in the flat lands. Otherwise, machines would crush the mud walls that frame the paddy.

In this one journey in China, I saw every stage of the production process, from turning over the hard, burned dry paddy with hoes featuring a swinging blade, to plowing with water buffalo or oxen in the dry and flooded paddy. I saw the seedling beds, as bright green as a St. Paddy's Day costume. I saw the men and women, of all ages, bent over all day, planting the seedlings into the flooded paddy, and then tending the crop as it grows. I saw the rice (looking much like wheat now) being harvested with a sickle, again the workers bent over. The rice is gathered into a two-fist size bundled, tied with a rice stalk, and laid down in the field in simple but exquisite patterns as if by an artist, the finished canvas framed by the paddy walls. Then the rice is threshed by beating these bundles against a board onto tarps or cloths for carrying from the field. The threshed bundles are then stacked again and carried on the back to become haystacks for the cattle. Then the cycle begins again. To think of this process being carried out up steep mountain sides is unfathomable, but they do it. It appears that every arable hectare is under cultivation, defying the obstacles of the terrain.

We are accustomed to some form of grace before meals, whether "from Thy bounty" or, as in a lengthy Buddhist prayer, thanking those many hands who made it possible for this food to be before us. Bro. Thay encourages us to meditate on these many hands, being mindful of who they are and what they do. One day, I was with two of my grandsons, seven and five, as they ate their cereal and milk and a glass of orange juice. I invited them to count with me all the people we could think of who were involved in that meal, from plowing to harvesting, from milking to the carton, from the orange grove to their glass, including shipping, stocking and selling. We came up with 57! I asked them to imagine them all present in their kitchen as they ate! Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), oddly enough, has an interesting "commercial" on PBS showing a boy eating his cereal, with a video collage of these very farmers, dairymen, and retailers behind him!

A lot of us were raised to not waste food, take more than we need, throw it away. I hate it when served more rice than I can eat when in a restaurant. From now on, it will always remind me of these rice farmers bent over from dawn to dusk making it possible for the world to have enough rice, even to throw away.

But, like that little boy in Cambodia, I will savor every grain.