These mountain dwellers live off the land, planting and harvesting rice year in and year out in order to sustain their families.
"All the time, opponents to golden rice insisted, year after year, that it would not be able to produce vitamin A in those who ate it," said Beyer, golden rice's co-creator.
I know my ancestors had things harder than I do—no central air, no Netflix subscription but they danced together, and made those half-moon rice cakes, year after year, for generations.
As the Kou River flows all year round, it offers a permanent source of water for irrigation, hence allowing two crops of rice per year (July-November and January-May).
The northeastern lowlands can sustain three crops of rice per year.
Today each Japanese consumes, on average, about 60kg of rice a year, roughly half the amount of the early 1960s.
He is intent on shipping most of his intended produce, including in excess of a million tonnes of rice a year, to Saudi Arabia.
Two crops of rice a year can be grown on most cultivated land, and in the Pearl River Delta three crops are not unusual.
He said there is a simple explanation: The government buys millions of tons of wheat and rice every year, but it does not buy pulses.
The results occasionally were notable, and in a few parts of the country farmers were able to grow two or, more rarely, three crops of rice per year.
