indonesia

Guest Blog: Farming with the Titimangsa: Losing Weather (and Water) in Time

By Nikolai Sindorf, WWF-US, based in Laos

In 1997 I went to the western part of Java in Indonesia to research on agricultural water management. Java is one of the most densely populated regions and high-yielding rice paddy lands in the world.
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The focus of my research was how rice farmers dealt technologically and organizationally with ongoing reforms in large, engineered irrigation systems. During this research I met a farmer who had meticulously typed out his traditional cropping calendar. This cropping calendar — a titimangsa — read like a beautiful poem, describing the smell of the dew, the color of the sunset, the touch of the soil, and the observation of insect life cycles.
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