[Tribal World] The land of food and ritual
by Matthew
One of the many traditional forms of agriculture practised by the Batak involves the ritualistic planting of rice.
As expert custodians of their lands, they have kept the forests of northern Palawan in the western Philippines in good order for thousands of years.
Today, this self-sufficient cultivation is imperilled by misguided forest conservation schemes, made worse by outsiders taking disease in and natural resources out.
A Batak man carries out a rice planting ritual. © Dario Novellino