Flying into Japan is always a startling experience. Rice Paddies are numerous and quite small and if you have read about tending them you may remember the human element and the seemingly major effort to tend one, more intense than our gardens for sure! But how to harvest the rice? I had visions of the old American Indian and early settlers method of cutting with a scythe, tying with twine a ‘bunch’ of stalks, carrying the bundles to a flaying area where the bundles are swung with force against the ground sheet where the ripe kernels are discharged from the stems. Then several people take corners of the sheet and vigorously lift and lower the sheet causing the grain to become airborne at the top of the swing and the breeze separates the chaff from the kernels, separation and storage follows.
1986 imagine my surprise that every rice paddy farmer has a two row combine! When the hopper fills with rice the farmer stops, removes a cloth bag from his machine and transfers the rice from hopper to bag; closes the bag to prevent spillage and carries the bag to the berm surrounding his paddy and stacks them for movement later. Back to his machine and continue harvesting two rows at a time!
Compare this to the 60 foot beams used today (2022) in America to harvest our upland crops; in my teens our combine had a 6 foot beam and the rice paddy has two rows–about three feet!
Some trivia: Iowa along the Mississippi River in the Midwest waterfowl flyway (and probably other States and flyways) has a program where Game and Fish plant Rice in the marshes for waterfowl in migration food stations. In the fall the paddies are flooded using gates and barriers so that the heads of the plant are semi-submerged in the water and ducks love it! Part of the program is to raise money from hunting to sustain the projects that Game and Fish continue for support of wildlife; so the marshes have stations staked and numbered, hunters pay a fee and secure a stake number and the boats are in the water and ready to start. At a prescribed pre-dawn time the whistle blows and the race is on to arrive at your stake and get ready for the day’s hunt! Those I have shared tales of this experience seems to be a highlight of the year and it does sound exciting!