Drying Rice

In many tropical countries like the Philippines drying rice or locally known as “palay” is by placing the rice on the concrete pavement such as the village basketball court or a portion of the highway or concrete road. “Palay” is placed inside the 50 kilo sack. After it is milled, one sack of “palay” may produce half sack of rice, more or less, depending on the quality of the “palay” harvested and the amount of times it is exposed under the heat of the sun.

It would surprise a stranger to look at the other half of the national highway or town road being occupied by “palay” directly exposed under the heat of the summer sun. The Law of the Commons is not observed, instead the drivers evade stepping on the “palay” as respect not only to the owners or farmers but to what God has graced upon his people – rice.

Planting rice varies from region to region. Some farmers plant rice earlier than the expected rainy season and others plant rice throughout the year.

The International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines is the agency that conducts rice research in the country. Other universities with agricultural colleges such as the University of the Philippines at Los Banos, Laguna also conducts research and maintain laboratories on rice varieties, arts and techniques of planting, maintains their own rice fields, conducts lectures and other services.

Rice is considered as a staple food of most peoples in the world particularly Asian Countries, Africa and South America. With the popularity of International Cuisine in cross-cultural setting, people from all walks of life eat rice from different styles of cooking such as: steamed rice, fried rice, porridge, pop rice, valenciana, paella, and many others. Rice is also used to cook dessert like the sticky rice called locally in the Philippines as “malagkit”.

Do you know that wine can also be extracted from rice? Asian countries where rice is produced in big quantities also produced high quality rice wines such as: Tapuy of the Philippines, Sake and Mirin of Japan, Makkoli of Korea which is made of rice and wheat and Shochu, among others.

Rice is the seed of monocot plants Oryza sativa, Asian Rice or Oryza glabirrimma, African rice.