Balinese farmer I Made Perasi understands the challenges of modernization well. He straddles two worlds as the owner of a car wash and the leader of a thriving but threatened rice cultivation system in the Pakerisan River’s Valley of Kings. His title is pekaseh, the elected head of a green and fruitful pocket of the watershed, which includes 110 families and their separate-but-cooperating rice paddy operations.
At the edge of one such paddy, Perasi dismounts his Honda motorbike and walks along a narrow canal. He’s wearing a traditional head wrap and sarong topped by an apricot-colored polo shirt. Perasi waves at a family splashing in water that will later flow out to irrigate their rice, as well as the coconut trees and bird-filled shrubs that divide the paddies. This may be rice country, but that’s hardly the only thing that grows here.
Perasi stops at a spot overlooking fields of ...
