1167627600
This view of rice field terraces shows how water is shared among many Balinese farmers by being released downhill in successive stages. The wet-rice field looks like a green staircase down a mountainside, with small spouts of water falling from step to step.Because the island of Bali is near the equator, in principle rice can be planted most any time of year. Water supplies, however, are maximized by having farmers plant their rice fields on a staggered schedule where the farmers farther downhill plant later than the farmers uphill. In that way, the same water can be used in turn and gravity-fed down to the next field when the rice plant is mature. In Bali, the elaborate agricultural irrigation system is regulated by water temple festivals, which signal to farmers at different elevations when it is their time to flood their fields and transplant their rice, and when it is time to drain their fields so that lower elevation farmers can have their turn.
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
This item has a Creative Commons license for re-use. This Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license means that you may use, remix, tweak, and build upon the work for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the original creator and as long as you license your new creation using the same license. For more information about Creative Commons licensing and a link to the license, see full details at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.