Recent changes in Balinese agricultural practices have brought about fundamental changes in the relationship of the Balinese to their staple crop. Rice production can no longer be expanded by bringing new lands under cultivation. Nor is mechanization a desirable alternative, given the current surplus of labor on the island. For these reasons, the official agricultural policy since the mid1970s has been to improve crop yields on existing fields through biological and chemical means.

The Green RevolutionThe cultivation of new, fast-growing, high yielding rice varieties, in concert with the application of chemical fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides, lies at the core of the government's agricultural development program (Bimas). Further aims are to improve methods of soil utilization and irrigation, and to set up new forms of cooperatives to provide credit and market surplus harvests. Over 80 percent of Bali's wet-rice fields are now subject to these intensification steps.

Since 1984, Indonesia has been able to meet most of its own rice needs, thus relieving some of the pressures responsible for the original "green revolution." As a result, an ecologically more meaningful "green evolution" is now possible, and rice varieties better suited to local conditions and better able to find an anchor in the traditional system of faith are being introduced to the island.

Since 1988, many fields now display new altars for Sri, and the hope is that her rice cult one of the basic elements of Balinese civilization and culture - will remain strong well into the future.