A Bunch of Crop

I recently received an email from a friend regarding Crop Art and at first I thought that the Crop Art was a fake. I checked with both Snopes and Urban Legends and it appears to be the real deal. You can see it here.

Earlier this year, crop circles were reported from the Netherlands to Tennessee. You can view them here.

The Crop Art in Japan is totally different and can be traced directly to the rice farmers in the local villages. Rice has sustained the farmers in the Inakadate Village in northern Japan for over 2,000 years and now it appears to be stimulating their creative juices. Farmers are planting rice to paint their fields. It is a farmer's mural painted on the fields by planting various colors and shades of rice.

The farmers enlist hundreds of volunteers and local villagers and plant purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rive and green leafed tsugaru rice. As the rice grows the colors begin to fill in the fields and from a distant, either by plane or standing on the mountainside cliffs, you can view the works of Crop Art. Some fields are more elaborate than others and depict anything from a Sengoku warrior on horseback to Napolean on horseback.

Tens of thousands of visitors have come to view the art which is best viewed during September as the rice is planted in May.

The Crop Art or Rice-paddy Art began in 1993 as an idea from a revitalization project. It would appear with the increased tourism in the region that what began with one committee's idea was a complete success. Sadly, at harvest the fields and their artistry are wiped clean until the next planting season.

You can watch a CBS video of the fields here.

It isn't a bunch of crap or crop after all. It is Rice-paddy Art.

Sources:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/ricefield.asp