A typical harvesting activity in the countryside still involves traditional methods. The rice stalks are cut using sickles and are piled in several areas in the rice field. Its mostly the women who are tasked with this, as the men are involved in more laborious tasks (but if you ask me, this is as laborious as it gets).

A thresher machine is then used to separate the rice grains from the stalk. In some remote areas where there are no thresher machines, they have to do it the hard way: by beating the stalks with a stick. The machine does not always do a thorough job of threshing, so the straw strewn out by the thresher can still be "reprocessed", by hand. Usually the owner of the rice field gives the straw to the villagers who live nearby as a sign of goodwill. If they are lucky they will still be able to get several sacks of grains from a huge pile of straw.

The compensation for all those involved in the harvest activity (i.e. owner of the thresher machine, laborers who will transport the sacks from the field to the mill, etc) is not in monetary form but in sacks of rice. For example: the stalk cutters, as a group, are paid 5 sacks of grains per hectare harvested.

I took these photos quite a while back and have completely forgotten about them until recently when the news about protests for the proper implementation of Philippines' CARP (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program) made headlines. The farmers do not own the land they till, more often than not. Until now they are still fighting for the lands that should have been distributed to them under the CARP initiative.