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Producing rice for consumption takes many steps in India, particularly in West Bengal, where farmers grow two crops a year. Workers at a rice mill in Kalna first soak the grain in water and then steam it in a process known as parboiling, which seals cracks in the rice and makes it harder. Then they spread it out to air dry on paved yards known as chatal before milling and polishing. Much of the hot, hard labor of turning and raking the rice piles is done by women, who, when these photographs were taken, were paid a minimum wage of 268 rupees (US $3.60) a day. West Bengal was the epicenter of India’s last major famine in 1943, when a cluster of simultaneous political, economic, and weather disasters caused an estimated three million deaths. Today it is one of the country’s most productive rice-growing regions, helping India produce more than 132 million tons of the crop each year. India is now the largest rice exporter in the world by far.

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Producing rice for consumption takes many steps in India, particularly in West Bengal, where farmers grow two crops a year. Workers at a rice mill in Kalna first soak the grain in water and then steam it in a process known as parboiling, which seals cracks in the rice and makes it harder. Then they spread it out to air dry on paved yards known as chatal before milling and polishing. Much of the hot, hard labor of turning and raking the rice piles is done by women, who, when these photographs were taken, were paid a minimum wage of 268 rupees (US $3.60) a day. West Bengal was the epicenter of India’s last major famine in 1943, when a cluster of simultaneous political, economic, and weather disasters caused an estimated three million deaths. Today it is one of the country’s most productive rice-growing regions, helping India produce more than 132 million tons of the crop each year. India is now the largest rice exporter in the world by far.

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