IPB Paddy Festival celebrates food

IPB Paddy Festival celebrates food

JAKARTA: The Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), in
cooperation with the Cultural Division of the French Foreign
Ministry and CIRAD, a French research center on tropical
agronomy, is holding the Paddy Festival at the IPB campus in
Dermaga, Bogor.

The event was opened on Tuesday by IPB deputy rector Asep
Saefuddin and Counselor for Cooperation and Cultural Affairs
Jacques de Croizant of the French Embassy in Indonesia, and is to
last until World Environment Day on June 5.

The theme of the festival is Food that Feeds the World.

The festival features various aspects of paddy, or unmilled
rice, including its history, cultivation and processing, as well
as economic and social discourses related to the scientific
innovation of paddy.

There are also 50 posters that are expected to raise public
awareness on problems in the development of paddy production.

"Gabah (paddy) and beras (milled rice) are two words that are
very close to us. Ironically, this closeness makes us take rice
for granted, as something unimportant," Asep said. "We never
thought about our knowledge of unmilled rice and the process
involved until the rice reaches our dinner table," he said. --
Antara