THAT DOES IT: Nobody Taught Us How To Plant Rice
You may consider this entry a rant. It’s just that I am so sick and tired of hearing “We taught you how to plant rice blah-blah” a million times in my lifetime and I have taken it like a real Thai – with non-confrontation “yeah-if-you-say-so” attitude – until now.
I met a group of Filipinos downstairs at the lobby (Sheraton Surabaya) earlier. Usual travel chit-chat and considering my deep affection for the Philippines, I always make it a point to be courteous and cool.
Until the conversation went to the RICE topic *again* – a standard pitch for Filipinos I meet around the world. “The Philippines taught the whole region the Science of Rice.”; “My country taught your country how to plant rice in the 60s.” “Thais, Vietnamese, Indonesians and our neighboring countries came to the Philippines in the 70s to study how to plant rice.” The pitch varies but says the same thing – they taught US how to plant rice.
I am a big fan of GMA Network documentaries. My DVD collection is extensive and I have almost everything they aired (I’ll tell you where I got the unreleased episodes another time). Either Jiggy or Howie mentioned “the pitch” in one of their docus and I thought it was poor taste… let me point it out to you –
The Philippines DID NOT teach Southeast Asia (especially Thailand) how to plant rice.
The Tai People of ancient Thailand has been planting rice since 4,000 BC. And considering our continuous history, chances are, the knowledge has been handed down to this day. The earliest and most convincing archeological evidence for domestication of rice in Southeast Asia was discovered by Wilhelm G. Solheim II in 1966 in Non Nok Tha in the Korat area of Thailand.
Korat and the Angkorian Kingdoms of Cambodia had close ties later on in history. Rice is already a staple in the ancient kingdoms of Southeast Asia. And evidences of cultivated rice as old as 10,000 BC are discovered in Spirit Cave on the Thai-Burmese border as well.
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) which happens to be located in the Philippines may be the source of this worldwide/region-wide “pitch”…
The IRRI is a non-profit, non-government organization established by Ford and Rockefeller Foundations of America in the height of the Asian Americanization of the 60s. They chose the location [among many reasons] because the Philippines is America’s closest ally in those days. So... what if they have chosen Cambodia to be the location of IRRI? Would it mean that Cambodia "taught" all of us how to plant rice?
Why do you think PhilRice was established in 1986? The same function, same research, same purpose – but the Filipinos fully own it. So, IRRI [where a lot of Southeast Asians came for further studies] is, in fact, an AMERICAN institution.
And please don’t bother commenting “IRRI is located here, so technically…” because I don’t wanna hear it. The ADB Headquarters is located there so does that mean you guys “taught” us how to bank? Ha!
I met a group of Filipinos downstairs at the lobby (Sheraton Surabaya) earlier. Usual travel chit-chat and considering my deep affection for the Philippines, I always make it a point to be courteous and cool.Until the conversation went to the RICE topic *again* – a standard pitch for Filipinos I meet around the world. “The Philippines taught the whole region the Science of Rice.”; “My country taught your country how to plant rice in the 60s.” “Thais, Vietnamese, Indonesians and our neighboring countries came to the Philippines in the 70s to study how to plant rice.” The pitch varies but says the same thing – they taught US how to plant rice.
I am a big fan of GMA Network documentaries. My DVD collection is extensive and I have almost everything they aired (I’ll tell you where I got the unreleased episodes another time). Either Jiggy or Howie mentioned “the pitch” in one of their docus and I thought it was poor taste… let me point it out to you –
The Philippines DID NOT teach Southeast Asia (especially Thailand) how to plant rice.The Tai People of ancient Thailand has been planting rice since 4,000 BC. And considering our continuous history, chances are, the knowledge has been handed down to this day. The earliest and most convincing archeological evidence for domestication of rice in Southeast Asia was discovered by Wilhelm G. Solheim II in 1966 in Non Nok Tha in the Korat area of Thailand.
Korat and the Angkorian Kingdoms of Cambodia had close ties later on in history. Rice is already a staple in the ancient kingdoms of Southeast Asia. And evidences of cultivated rice as old as 10,000 BC are discovered in Spirit Cave on the Thai-Burmese border as well.
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) which happens to be located in the Philippines may be the source of this worldwide/region-wide “pitch”…The IRRI is a non-profit, non-government organization established by Ford and Rockefeller Foundations of America in the height of the Asian Americanization of the 60s. They chose the location [among many reasons] because the Philippines is America’s closest ally in those days. So... what if they have chosen Cambodia to be the location of IRRI? Would it mean that Cambodia "taught" all of us how to plant rice?
Why do you think PhilRice was established in 1986? The same function, same research, same purpose – but the Filipinos fully own it. So, IRRI [where a lot of Southeast Asians came for further studies] is, in fact, an AMERICAN institution.And please don’t bother commenting “IRRI is located here, so technically…” because I don’t wanna hear it. The ADB Headquarters is located there so does that mean you guys “taught” us how to bank? Ha!
I’m gonna talk back.
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--Pisanu in Surabaya
08 Sept 2008
08 Sept 2008
