THE RICE TERRACES OF BANAUE - PHILIPPINES

The Rice Terraces of the Banaue area of the Philippines are a series of ancient, tiered rice paddies built into the side of Ifugao Mountains. Constructed over the course of two-thousand years by the local indigenous population, the Terraces have been in consistent use for generations upon generations of farmers, and have only recently been recognized by the world abroad for their cultural importance and stunning intricacy and scope. The Terraces represent one of the most massive communal farming operations in the world and function as a symbol of the indigenous population of the Phillipines as a whole.

The region of Ifugao is a landlocked, mountainous area of the island of Luzon, the largest and most populous island of the Philippines. Isolated from the coastal regions of the island and covered in jagged mountains and thick rainforests, most would not consider the area to be a suitable location for farming and development. However, the local Ifugao People (meaning "people of the hills" in their native tongue) found a way to transform the inhospitable terrain into a massive agricultural project that would continue to provide them and their children with bountiful quantities of food for nearly two millennia.