Nasi is the staple of Balinese cuisine, but the Bali provincial government is challenging itself and residents to go rice-less.
The high demand on the island for rice has lead Bali’s government to do an experiment it hopes to start in August 2015 for a rice free day, according to Merdeka.
The initiative will begin with the government, but will hopefully extend out to the community, Ketut Lihadnyana, Head of Bali’s Community Empowerment and Village Government (BPMD) said on Tuesday, as quoted by Merdeka.
Lihadnyana says Balinese should look for sources of carbohydrates in foods other than rice, such as maize, cassava, and potatoes and his “One Day No Rice” policy is considering the critical supply of rice in Indonesia.
“The need for rice is not proportional to the number of existing supplies. Even though Indonesia is rich in agricultural resources, some rice must be imported from out of the country,” he said, as quoted by Merdeka.
Lihadnyana says ideally the no rice policy could eventually be done more frequently like twice a month or even once a week. Kind of hard for us to imagine with all the nasi campur, nasi goreng, nasi padang, basically nasi everything in all the warungs here, but we’ll see how it goes in August. Kind of sounds like an April Fools joke to us, Bali without nasi, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Illustration: Pixabay
