According to Wikipedia, rice is the dominant food crop of Bangladesh and accounts for close to 75 percent of the agricultural land use. According to our guide, the Bangladeshi eat more rice than anyone else on earth. After being here for a week, I think that is probably right. The country side is rice paddy after rice paddy after rice paddy.
This time of year, most of the rice has been harvested—although they can grow two or three crops a year. Once cut, the rice is laid out to dry on large concrete slabs the size of parking lots. When it rains they quickly push the rice into small organized piles across the concrete and cover them with jute “hats”.
When the rain stops the rice workers remove the cones and spread the rice using large wooden “brooms” requiring three people to manage. Two women on each end pull the broom with ropes while a third woman walks behind holding a long handle to keep the broom stable. Imagine hundreds of teams, moving across hundreds of concrete slabs in a choreographed dance – all spreading a brown textured carpet of rice kernels across the country side.
The discarded stems of the rice plant are piled high in tidy mounds and used for fuel and fertilizer. Nothing is wasted. The workers and their families live in the corrugated metal housing that line the rice platforms, yet rice work, like harvesting tea, is women’s work.
