Java is the granary of plenty for all the Eastern Archipelago; and the Dutch East India Company occupies itself in this culture with solicitude, well persuaded that a scarcity of rice might be fatal to its power.  Ordinances to encourage and increase this branch of agriculture, have been promulgated at different times by an authority called to watch over the physical well-being of many millions of inhabitants.

As an evident proof that the culture of rice, of which it would be difficult to fix the quantity produced annually, increases considerably, I may mention that the exportation from Java, in 1840, was 1,488,350 piculs of 125 Dutch lbs.

Rice is cultivated in Java in three systems.  The name of sawah is given to the rice fields, which can be irrigated artificially; tepar, or tagal, are elevated but level grounds; and gagah, or ladang, are cleared forest grounds.  The two last only give one crop; a second crop may be obtained from the sawah, which then most commonly consists of katjang, from which oil is extracted, in kapus or fine cotton, and in ubie, a kind of potato.

There are, says Mr. Crawfurd, two distinct descriptions of rice cultivated throughout the Indian islands, one which grows without the help of immersion in water, and another for which that immersion is indispensably requisite.  In external character there is very little difference between them, and in intrinsic value not much.  The marsh rice generally brings a somewhat higher price in the market.  The great advantage of this latter consists in its superior fecundity.  Two very important varieties of each are well known to the Javanese husbandman, one being a large productive, but delicate grain, which requires about seven months to ripen, and the other a small, hardy, and less fruitful one, which takes little more than five months.  The first we constantly find cultivated in rich lands, where one annual crop only is taken; and the last in well watered lands, but of inferior fertility, where two crops may be raised.

Both of these, but particularly the marsh rice, is divided into a great number of sub-varieties, characterised by being awned or otherwise, having a long or round grain, or being in color black, red, or white.  The most singular variety is the O. glutinosa, of Rumphius.  This is never used as bread, but commonly preserved as a sweetmeat.  The rudest, and probably the earliest practised mode of cultivating rice, consists in taking from forest lands a fugitive crop, after burning the trees, grass, and underwood.  The ground is turned up with the mattock, and the seed planted by dibbling between the stumps of trees.  The period of sowing is the commencement of the rains, and of reaping that of the dry season.  The rice is of course of that description which does not require immersion.

The second description of tillage consists also in growing mountain or dry land rice.  This mode is usually adopted on the common upland arable lands, which cannot conveniently be irrigated.  The grain is sown in the middle of the dry season, either broadcast or by dibbling, and reaped in seven or five months, as the grain happens to be the larger or the smaller variety.