International Rice Research Institute

BILL GATES AND WIFE MELINDA VISITED THE LAGUNA-BASED INTERNATIONAL RICE RESEARCH INSTITUTE (IRRI) FOR SIX HOURS LAST WEEK WITH DR. PAMELA ANDERSON, THE AGRICULTURAL HEAD OF THE FOUNDATION.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supports  the research of IRRI on golden rice, the genetically modified hybrid supposedly infused with beta-carotene (Vitamin A) and other vitamins.  The rice will be a big help to the people of the Philippines, Bangladesh and other rice eaters.  The foundation made an annual commitment of $18 million to IRRI.  Prior to their visit to the rice fields, they went with two of their three children to Puerto Princesa, Palawan and stayed for three days at the luxurious Amanpulo beach resort and El Nido beach.  It was a pleasure and business trip - investing with a Filipino connection for a resort hotel in Palawan.

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WOW!!!  Truly a unique and masterpiece art in farming.

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  Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice  fields in Japan , but this is no alien creation.   The designs have been cleverly  PLANTED!  Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink  or dye.  Instead, different colour rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields. 
As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to  emerge.  
    
 A Sengoku warrior on  horseback  has been created from hundreds of thousands of  rice plants.  The colours are created by using different varieties of rice plants, whose leaves grow in certain colours.  This photo was taken in Inakadate , Japan    .  
 Napoleon on horseback can be seen from the  skies.  This was created by precision planting and months of planning by villagers and farmers located in Inkadate , Japan    .    

Fictional warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife,  Osen, 
whose lives are featured on the television  series 'Tenchijin' & nbsp;appear in fields in the town of  Yonezawa in the Yamagata prefecture of Japan    .  

This year, various artwork has popped up in other rice-farming   areas of Japan , including designs of deer  dancers.  Smaller works of 'crop-art' can be seen in other  rice-farming areas of Japan such as this image of Doraemon and deer dancers   
The farmers create the  murals  by planting little purple and yellow-leafed  Kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed Tsugaru, a Roman variety, to create the coloured patterns in the time between planting and harvesting in  September. 
The murals in Inakadate cover 15,000 square  meters of paddy fields.  

From ground level, the designs are invisible,

 and viewers have to climb the mock castle tower of the village office to get a glimpse of the  work.   fm

Closer to the image, the careful placement of the thousands  of rice plants in the paddy fields can be seen.  Rice-paddy art was started there in 1993 as a local revitalization project, an idea that grew from meetings of the village  committees.  The different varieties of rice plants grow alongside each other to create the  masterpieces.  In the first nine years, the village office workers and local farmers  grew a simple design of Mount Iwaki every year.  But their ideas grew more complicated and attracted more attention.  

In 2005, agreements between landowners  allowed the creation of enormou s rice paddy art.  A year later, 
organizers used computers to precisely plot the planting of four  differently colored rice varieties that bring the images to  life!  TRULY A WORK OF ART!!   

Published 10/20/11  altgroup multiply
Web Page RICE FIELDS OF JAPAN