Rice field terraces showing water being released downhill

Rice field terraces showing water being released downhill

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.