Because it is so humid and hot here things grow with very little soil and tending.  It's a good place to grow rice, which is the staple of the Philippine diet.  (There's a McDonalds here in the mall and they give you a riceball with your big Mac).  After the rice is harvested and dried they gather the chaff and burn it.  Then they get the fields ready for another planting.  They can get three crops a year.  It's planted and harvested by hand.  Hot, hard, and backbreaking work!

Rice is grown in the fields and then it is laid out to dry,  usually along the sides of the highways.  We saw some yesterday which was laid out in the sun and chickens were walking in it and pecking around.