Pre-colonial Irrigation management

In Bali, more than a thousand years ago, in decentralized way, people seem to have arrived
ata sophisticated system of irrigation management, run by committees known as subaks. As with
many worldly matters, this was done under the guise of religion. The subaks placed water
temples along the slope of mountains, at points critical to water's movement down the sides.
The rice farmers planted in tiers along the mountainside, in places where the subaks were
sending the water.

Western scientists, arriving on the scene in the mid 20th century, advancing what they saw
as a green revolution brought a new system. This was part of the "green revolution," which
some called neo-imperialism. It was also a fiasco.

Pest control was also critical in the transition. Under the traditional system, the fields weren’t
harvested all at once or all seeded with the same crop. So although fields sometimes became pest
infested, after the harvest those pests would starve. The rice they fed on was gone. The surrounding
fields would likely have a different crop, because farmers would take turns growing rice, in a
cycle governed by temple ritual. The other crop might well be less delectable to the pests. Or
perhaps the neighboring field would have been left fallow that year.

The new, more scientific, more western, approach to farming introduced around 1970 involved
much more rice, with new hybridized seeds, fertilizers, and chemical pesticides. Given the
emphasis on rice and economies of scale, there was no longer any natural process of letting
the pests die off after a harvest.  

The pest populations in time overwhelmed the artificial pesticides and were benefitting
from the over reliance on rice. Eventually, even the helpful-hand westerners understood that
the ‘progress’ preached by the scientific green-revolution types had become a grievous problem itself.

Take from this tale what lessons you will.