What is a foodway? What is Rice Fish Culture?

Fishin For Rice

Foodways are the cultural, social, and economic practices relating to the
production and consumption of food. Foodways often refers to the intersection
of food in culture, traditions, and history.
We are researching the foodway intersection of fish and rice.
Where do these two foods meet? It turns out that they can meet much before
hitting your plate. Fish and rice are often cultivated together in the same ricepaddy environment, a process titled rice-fish culture.
Our Aim:
After our experiences in China and Japan this past interim, we started thinking
about the intersection of two foodways: rice and fish. By researching rice-fish
culture, we can better understand this ancient agricultural practice and how it
benefits modern day China and Japan.

Paul Sullivan, Stephan Akers, Kaitlyn Howell

What this means to us

We stayed in Shanghai, China, and Tokyo, Japan for the month of January
2015. While we were eating rice and fish dishes in two of the most
metropolitan and forward-facing cities in the Asia, we wondered where
ancient China and Japan had gone. By studying the cultural and ecological
resurgence of rice fish culture in China, and in Japan, we realized that the
importance of ancient practices still endure.

How Rice Fish Culture Works

1. Farmers link paddy canals to existing waterways to encourage fish to enter
the field, or they introduce non-native species
2. Fish:
a. Bump into the rice stalks, knocking insect pests into the water and
eating them
b. Knock dew off the rice stalks, protecting against fungal infections
c. Eat weeds that grow in the paddies
3. At the end of the growing season, both rice and fish are
harvested

Agricultural Advantages

Paddy in Jiangsu

Rural-Cultural Benefits

(http://library.enaca.org/AquacultureAsia/Articles/Oct-Dec-2003/13ricefishfang.pdf)

Significance for Japan

GIAHS, a nonprofit dedicated to resurging traditional farming techniques in

China, interviewed Mrs. Lizhen Wu (age 52) from the Zhejiang Province, to
ask how rice-fish culture has benefited her community. She says:
We are more aware of our traditional agricultural practices--this was not
appreciated as much before.
We continue our culture, traditions, dancing, singing...more importantly,
securing our diverse nutritious foods for everyday living.
Through rice fish farming, we make more money by selling organic
products
Our community feels that preserving our heritage systems is important

Researchers from the Japanese Society of Fishery Science studied the benefits
of rice fish farming for small plots of land in Japan. They discovered that rice
production increased by 20% compared to a rice plot without fish of the same
size.
Even though rice-fish culture in Japan is not as prevalent as in China, it stands
to benefit local farmers in Japan, since space is limited and there has been a
recent movement to make Japan agriculturally more self-sustaining.

Historical Decline
Rice-fish culture goes back 2,000 years, likely originating in 1st
century CE in what are now Chinas Sichuan and Guizhou
provinces.
During the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s, the communalization
of farmland largely eradicated rice-fish agriculture. (elaborate?)
After the economy was normalized in 1978, farmers relied largely
on pesticides and fertilizers in lieu of the traditional rice-fish
arrangement

~20% increased land productivity

Decreased maintenance of rice plants and fish as both help sustain and
nourish the other
Decreased fertilizer use
fish excrement and dead fish increase soil nitrogen levels
Decreased pesticide use
Decreased methane emissions

Contemporary Revival
Promotion of rice-fish culture by the Chinese government began in 1983
with a nationwide agricultural seminar focused on fish-rice cultivation
techniques
This campaign was followed by others throughout the late 1980s and
through the 1990s
As a result, from 1994-1999 China saw a ~70% increase in paddy acreage
and ~214% increase in food fish production.
Fish-rice culture has since expanded to western and northern China, neither
of which have traditionally practiced this technique due to their focus on
wheat production

Bibliography
Fang, Xiuzhen. 2003. "Rice-Fish Culture in China." Aquaculture Asia 8
(4):44-46.
Lansing, J. Stephen, and James N. Kremer. 2011. "Rice, fish, and the planet."
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America 108 (50):19841-19842.
Santos, Gonalo. 2011. "Rethinking the Green Revolution in South China:
Technological Materialities and Human-Environment Relations." East
Asian Science, Technology and Society: an International Journal 5
(4):479-504.
Tsuruta, Tetsuya, Motoyoshi Yamaguchi, Shin-ichiro Abe, and Kei'ichiro Iguchi.
2011. "Effect of Fish in Rice-Fish Culture on the Rice Yield." Fisheries
Science 77 (1):95-106.