Betsileo Rice Challenge: Introduction

In the Betsileo Rice Challenge tool you choose to play one of six typical Betsileo household heads in charge of providing for your family through growing rice. Your choice of characters ranges across the socio-economic spectrum. Some are male, and some are female. Your can choose to be any of these people (click on their names to see what they look like):

  1. Razina (female) has three rice fields (all sharecropped) covering 2 acres, one adult kin and two children, neither in school.
  2. Ravictor (male) has three rice fields (all sharecropped) covering 2.5 acres, two adult kin and two children, neither in school.
  3. Ramaro (female) has three rice fields covering 2.5 acres, two adult kin and four children, one in school.
  4. Rajaona (male) has three rice fields covering 3 acres, a cow, four adult kin and two children, neither in school.
  5. Ragry (male) has five fields covering 3.5 acres, a cow, two wage labourers working for him, two adult kin and three children, one in school.
  6. Rabakoly (female) has four rice fields covering 4 acres, a cow, two wage labourers working for her, two adult kin and two children, one in school.

When you have chosen your character you will be able to choose how to cultivate your fields. A set of links will provide background information on the pros and cons of the different cultivation methods, plus further contextual information from Dr. Freeman's thesis. Once you have chosen a method for each of your fields, you can run the model and see how you get on.

Your harvest for the season will be presented to you in a report in which you will discover whether you produced enough rice to feed your family, and what factors influenced this. Based on this information, you can choose your agricultural method for the next season, and run the model again. Do this for six seasons, keeping notes on your progress.

As a head of household, you are in charge of providing enough rice to feed your family. The strategic decisions you make affect your crop and your family’s fortunes. You might end up with plenty to eat, or not enough. You might be able to send your children to school, or have to withdraw them. You might please your ancestors, or anger them. All the decisions you make are culturally informed and have social and cultural implications.

The Betsileo Rice Challenge enables you to experience for yourself the complex series of decisions made by Betsileo farmers. It gives you a sense of the repercussions of those decisions over the long and short term. The more you read of the thesis, the better you’ll appreciate the complexity of the decisions you’re making. This will help you strategise more effectively to produce more rice and hence take better care of your family.

When you have finished, write a 200 word report on your agricultural success or failure.

To play the Betsileo Rice Challenge, click here and login using the name "guest".

Last updated 21/06/05