To plant at the end of August after the land is burned in dry season and welcoming the rainy season in the early of September.By the time, the soil becomes fertile since the rainwater falls soaking dust and charcoal of the land.The age of rice ranges from six to seven months, so the age of rice is very ideal since the start of planting to the harvest time.During this farming period, the final product is not only rice but many things emerge which will be discussed further.According to Kroeber and Kluckhohn the culture of a nation can be seen or characterized in seven dimensions.One of them is the livelihood system.By examining the whole process in the Dayak farming system above, it can be summarized that farming is a concrete existence of the Dayak people’s livelihood system.Therefore, Dayak people will not be able to live and to continue their life without farming.In the context of the cultural dimension the Dayak farming system must be seen and placed in the chain of cultural values and traditional custom which is full of knowledge and wisdom where not merely the result to be seen farming for rice.Social learning requires shared goals and cannot be defined as having a single goal or goals isolated from each other.Broad social goals that transcend the immediate interests of those involved in a decision can enhance social learning by fostering trust and reducing conflict.Where is the social dimension of Dayak people’s farming?
The social dimension is found in each farming stage where the Dayak people do work mutually in cooperation known as handep.In carrying out stages of farming,hydroponic gutter it also contains various expressions of ritual, custom, culture, art, and various aspects that represent farming is part of Dayak people’s life for being able to be understood through the explanation of farming stages in the following.Not all Dayak people can cultivate an area since they must first go through an initial process that is inspecting the land.Typically, inspecting the land for farming is done through deliberation by notifying the neighbor who has land borders, or is next to the land to be cultivated.By doing so, it will become clear in case of the land ownership whether the field belongs to the farmer, the customary land, the disputed land, the inheritance land , the fruit-tree land, and so on.If there is no problem with the ownership, then the land is able to be farmed or cultivated.Social values and processes related to social integrity is the foundation of Dayak community cohesion.If there is no problem with the neighbors’ borders related to the land planned to be farmed, then the land is inspected to stick some stakes on the field to be farmed.The one who inspects the land may also not be alone.It should involve related parties by doing mini ceremonial gathering and offering some meals and drinks before and after inspecting.For the Dayak people, farming is not just human work.It also involves all beings, especially The Highest, The Owner of this universe.In this regard, people must ask Him for blessing in order to be safe through the entire farming process and gain the maximum yield.Farming tools must be cleaned to avoid hazards and accidents, so that people using them will not get injured.In addition, farming tools also may have luckiness.In fact, there is a ceremony to clean the farming tools which symbolically go along with prayers.
The tools cleaned consist of knives, axes, pickaxes, sickles, handheld blades for harvesting, rattan-woven hats, and also rattan-woven baskets.Only after the tool cleaning ceremony, all farming tools can be used.After slashing the bushes, we could see the boundaries of the farming field from edge to edge.Thus, slashing the land is an important stage to mark officially the area of the farm.When slashing, big trees are left and have not been cut down yet.The only tools used when slashing are knives while axes and pickaxes are not.This means certain tools are only used for certain purposes.So, pickaxes and axes later are only used to cut down big trees and chopping them to the ground.This is done firstly by seeing and calculating the height of the land.Then, the trees are cut down starting from the edge of the field on the lowest ground level to the upper one.The cutting wood period is usually done in June and July of the year.All trees on fields that have been cut down are labelled by various names.Dayak Bidayuh in West Kalimantan, for instance, names them as “robatn”.The logs cut down are let to be dry for about two months until they are ready to burn.The stage of burning the land is a very critical issue today, though it was not a problem before 1990s.If we refer to Lubis’s study that the practice of farming in the archipelago, including Kalimantan, has been going on since 10.000 years ago before Christ.By this fact, for approximately twelve centuries no one has questioned the Dayak farming system, which is popular by slash-and-burn technique to clear the land and to produce the soil fertility.Therefore, this “burning” stage is often a crucial point to be taken into account since on this stage some philosophies and wisdom implied behind become a reason to be practiced.The reason is that to burn the fields is a traditional way to clear the land.Besides, ashes and charcoals generated from the result of burning will enrich the soil fertility.As inJava Island, for instance, there are volcanoes that can fertilize the soil after eruption.This is also similar technique of the soil fertilization compared with Kalimantan and other areas since they have no volcanos to do such thing.Indigenous and traditional peoples, as well as other local small holders worldwide, ignite vegetation for sustenance, territorial management, and cultural expression.They often do so with the objectives or effects of promoting resource availability, diversity, and resilience.Cultural burning traditions and their influences on local fire regimes are immensely diverse and contribute to ecological processes and conservation narratives in heterogeneous ways.Indigenous peoples lands and traditional burning practices are often shown to be positively associated with landscape conservation, maintenance of vegetation cover, and biodiversity.In burning the field, the Dayaks work together to protect the land from possible fires that can spread to areas nearby the field.They carry some water and traditional fire extinguishers.By doing such thing in burning the land, the area burned is only for the field to be farmed.In this regard, it is relevant with what Brigadier General Dinar—a Dayak and a former Chief of Regional Police of Central Kalimantan who understands the philosophy of burning the land.He stated that “in the past, burning the field for farming do not cause social-economic problems because the land is still large.Besides, the Dayak people work together to protect the land while burning, so that the fire does not spread anywhere.Again, burning the field is done in the mutual cooperation between relatives in turn for those who plan to farm.Also, the fields burned are not just leaved without controlling since the fire is dangerous to let it flare with no one to watch around.Unlike present, where burning fields does not follow the traditional wisdom, safety and environmental sustainability.Therefore, it makes sense that to burn the land today is prohibited by the official of law enforcement because the way or technique of burning is no longer wise as it used to be”.However, in practice, not all officials understood the philosophy of burning the fields.In Sanggau and Sintang of West Kalimantan Province, for instance, farmers were arrested by law enforcement officials and brought on trial before the Court.Still, the people fought concurrently to maintain their traditional way of burning the land.Finally, the farmers were released.By realizing and observing this problem, the Governor of West Kalimantan, Sutarmidji issued the Governor Regulation No.39 in 2019 regarding forest and land fires or termed as Karhutla.This means that the Dayak’s farming practices highly consider environmental sustainability aspects.Some local governments also have passed ordinances or other local laws governing environmental issues of local concern.The point is that one of the farming cycles of the Dayak people named burning the field has not only practiced recently, but it has been done since twelve centuries ago.During that time, there was no destruction to nature and the environment.Yet it is often misunderstood and misinterpreted.To be emphasized here is that Dayak people are not burning the forests,hydroponic nft channel but burning areas that are merely to become their farming fields.This is what a misperception emerges serious problems in almost all regions in Kalimantan where Dayak people burn the land in every farming season.The season for burning fields usually occurs from the end of August to the beginning of September.Those two months belong to the dry season in which not long after burning, the rains soaking ashes and charcoals.Then, the rain fertilizes the soil besides making it easier to dibble or to plant.The part of the farming system that also shows a mutual cooperation is when planting or dibbling the land.The seeds are first collected into one place.Then planters or dibblers gather together to carry out praying.After praying the seeds are sprinkled with water before being planted.In the process of planting the seeds, the men are dibbling the land using a sharpened wooden stick to make holes on the ground while the women are called as “to pass the seeds” which means putting rice and vegetable seeds into the holes dibbled.Planting by dibbling is very interesting part of farming stages where the people are served with quite extraordinary food.The farming field owner usually cooks chicken or other domestic animals as a feast in the field.Everybody has a portion to eat meals including all residents of the entire village, which was calculated based on the number of the head of family.This planting time also perform various arts and culture such as reciting quatrains in-turn to each other, smearing on people’s faces with charcoal, playing jokes, and so on.Then, for rich families in the evening there is still a feast to eat together, which among the Dayak Bidayuh is so-called “manyakng”, or extending the dibbling-planting ceremony.It is also a gathering session to plan whose field to be planted for the next day.Other than rice, there are actually many kinds of crops in the Dayak people’s fields.For example, binamut that grows on the ground and on logs, mustard greens, spinach, bamboo shoots, cucumber, watermelon, pumpkin, and various kinds of traditional vegetables.This implies that the value-benefit as well as the economic value of the fields is not only rice.Behind the farming there is an invaluable culture that cannot be measured and calculated merely from the yield of rice.Rice is indeed only one of the many values of farming.The weeding season—done from November to December is the activity of cleaning grass around the rice and other plants.This is usually done manually by-hand or with traditional tools in mutual cooperation and in-turn.The grass uprooted over time will become compost that fertilizes the plants.The time period between weeding and harvesting is roughly three to four months.The rice that has been weeded from the grass in the field will grow more, so that around in March or April the rice is yellowing and ready to be harvested.In this harvest season there is great joy among Dayak people.They go to the fields in a crowd to harvest the rice, either manually by hand or using ani-ani , or the rice stalks are cut with a knife or a sickle, then the rice is beaten so that the grains fall to be collected.In Figure 5 below, now most Dayak people harvest rice by cutting its stalks, then separating the grains from the stalks by knocking them out using a simple tool, namely gebyok, a board made of wood.The grains of rice that are detached from their stalks are collected and put into sacks or rattan-woven baskets, then they are brought back home to be stored in the barn.Agriculture is the backbone of the Ethiopia’s economy and contributes about 34.1% of the national gross domestic product , 79% of employment, 79% of foreign earnings, and is the major sources of raw material and capital for investment and market.Livestock is an integral sub-sector of the agriculture and contributes about 17–25.3% of the country’s GDP, 39–49% of agricultural GDP, over 50% of household income.