Le Mondine of the 1950s                                                                      Riso Amaro “Bitter Rice”

In Italian rice fields in the 1950s prior to the development of herbicides, weeding was done by hand. In May, the rice fields had to be weeded to prevent the young rice from being choked by other vegetation. Hundreds of women known as le mondine, or weeders, arrived from all parts of Italy to perform the delicate task of rooting out the weeds while leaving the young rice plants in place. Le mondine have become a nostalgic memory, immortalized by the famous film Riso Amaro or ‘Bitter Rice.’ It was a hard life for le mondine. They had to work bent double, up to their knees in water under a blazing sun. As the women weeded, they sang. One of the songs, Bella Ciao, was adopted by the Italian Communist Party to express the social injustice of the system. In the 1960s, most of the women left the rice fields when jobs opened up in cities, such as Milan, Genoa, and Turin. Today, herbicides are used in Italian rice fields.

“Italy is the largest rice producer in Europe, with about 235,000 ha in 2012. The main rice cultivation area is concentrated in the north-western regions of Piedmont and Lombardy where the continuous paddy rice system is widespread. Weed management is one of the key aspects of rice cultivation because pedo-climatic conditions are favourable to weeds that are generally competitive, there is a rich and persistant seed bank, and the weed flora is often dominated by difficult-to-control species… Consequently, farmers need to apply complex chemical and agronomic strategies to guarantee good weed control. Herbicide use is intense, with an average treatment frequency index higher than 2.5.”

Authors: Scarabel, L, et al.
Affiliations: National Research Council, Italy.
Title: Resistance evolution and sustainability of the rice cropping system: the Italian case study.
Source: Global Herbicide Resistance Challenge: Program and Abstracts. February 18-22, 2013. Pg. 105.