The Apatani fish-in-field tradition: aquaculture that never floods a paddy
In Ziro, the rice fields double as fish farms — a system that feeds twice and wastes nothing.
In the Apatani valley’s terraced fields, rice and fish share the same water: fingerlings released at planting grow fat on the field’s insects and return as protein at harvest.
The system, centuries old, is being studied by aquaculture researchers as a model of water-efficient protein production.
The Apatani have a word for the symbiosis, and no translation: the field is not a field if it does not feed both.