On the back-roads to Osan there are fields & fields of rice.

I’ve been trying to determine if all these are owned by 1 or 2 conglomerates or if it’s a patchwork of farmers – each with their own plot.

From the look of the equipment, it makes me think that these are shared fields.

What’s the most interesting to me is how they bundle it up. Just as there are big bales of hay that dot the Texas & Oklahoma landscape, here they’re bound up in white plastic bags.

If I had to guess, it’s because they don’t want to lose any of the rice grains – and bagging it up would definitely solve that problem.

But slowly one by one, all the fields are being stripped.

There must be a processing plant somewhere that takes all their bundles & shakes all the rice loose.

Can you imagine having to do it all by hand?