Hartmann Event GmbH
Résidence Park
Industriestrasse 16
CH-6300 Zug
HARTMANN
Tel.: +41 71 744 76 83
Fax: +41 71 744 66 63
E-Mail: [email protected]
www.hartmannevent.ch
RICE FEEDS
THE WORLD
EXHIBIT DOCUMENTATION
Mobile topical exhibit about rice as
the most important staple food for
80 % of the world’s population.
Josef Muellek – fotolia.de
Stephen Coburn – fotolia.de
Adam Wolszcak – fotolia.de
Werbung: Lammoth Mailkonzept SG
Contents:
1. Rice is life
2. Topic introduction
3. Exhibit modules
4. Interactivity
5. Communication to success
Christian Wagner – fotolia.de
Andrey Sliozberg – fotolia.de
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Rice – the staple food for half the world’s population.
For mobile scientific and cultural exhibitions, Hartmann Event has selected the UNO topic
«International Year of Rice.» The exhibit addresses the broad public of shopping centers, it
is attended, dialogue-oriented, and it exudes good feeling and ambiance. It is available in
German and French.
1. Rice is life
Knowledge transfer, interaction and entertainment in the shopping centre
If you believe the myth, the beginning of rice culture was the result of a great love. For then
the sky loved the earth. When the sky moved across the earth for the first time to kiss her,
grains of rice fell out of his pocket onto the earth and, from that time on, they have served
human beings as food. A fossil record in a cave in northern Thailand indicates that rice was
already cultivated in Asia 10,000 years before Christ. Subsequently, this old cultivated plant
came out of the cave and conquered the entire world: from the south of China to ancient
Egypt, across Greece and Rome to America. Even in Germany, where rice was cultivated
near Bamberg briefly in the 18th century. And today, the Maggia Delta in the Swiss canton
Tessin is the northernmost place in the world where rice is cultivated.
Switzerland is just one of more than 100 countries where more than 120,000 types of rice are
cultivated today. Total production is approximately 610 million tons, which makes rice, in addition to millet, corn, potatoes and manioc, among the most important staple foods for human
beings. A special advantage of this plant is its versatility: in addition to being used as a food,
it is also made into alcoholic drinks, vinegar, rope, straw mats, huts, sandals, brooms, glue,
starch, candles, soap, fertiliser, cattle feed and building materials. Furthermore, in eastern
and southeast Asian countries, rice is regarded as a supernatural power and as a god which
has great influence on everyday life. And millions of people see rice as a symbol of life and
worship it as a godly plant.
Taolmor – fotolia.de
Bren Kröger – fotolia.de
Peter Pfaffmann – fotolia.de
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2. Topic introduction
No rice without effort: the white kernel between myth and reality
Nearly two-thirds of the world’s population feeds itself from the fertile fields of this swamp
crop with the Latin name Oryza sativa. A meal without rice, says an old Chinese saying, is
like a one-eyed beauty. No wonder that many Asians eat rice three times a day and that in
the six countries where the most rice is grown (China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam
and Thailand), it provides up to eighty percent of the calories consumed daily.
However, like no other plant, rice is also associated with the problem of world hunger. And
with the anxious question: what is growing faster – the plant or the world’s population? For
millions of people, rice is the only staple food most days. The beginning of the monsoon and
the tonnage of the rice harvest are documented anxiously each year, for the production
figures determine life and death. And as with no other grain, the pressure to produce
ever-greater harvests is increasing.
reviewteam – fotolia.de
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But there is a limit to production. For in contrast to America, where nearly all work is done by
machines, in Asia the hard work of rice cultivation is done by animals and people. Many steps
are required. And many busy hands. It is mostly women who stand with deeply-bent backs
and both feet in the water of the rice fields, pulling out the seedlings after a month in order to
plant them again at a greater distance from one another. Rice is only ready for harvest after
the field has been dried out again. After that, the rice is threshed, dried and hulled. Next it is
winnowed. This means that the kernels and chaff are shaken out onto panels made of bamboo tubes and shaken through. The light husks are blown away by the wind, the kernels
remain on the panel.
This exhibition was organised in cooperation with the United Nations, the international
research center for agriculture, the French rice museum, rice growers from the Camargue,
as well as the embassies of India, Japan and Thailand.
The goal of the mobile topical exhibit is to transmit knowledge, to entertain and to
fascinate. About the myths and reality of the staple food rice. About types of rice, rice
cultivation and harvest, about types of rice and world hunger.
reviewteam – fotolia.de
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3. Exhibit modules
Module:
• Real rice field
Natural rice plants – 50 cm high and with fully-ripe rice plants with kernels – will be
made into a real rice field with green rice plants. Artistically-designed display boards
inform with interesting explanations about rice cultivation, the seeds, the blooms, the
kernel, etc.
• Original Thai pavilion with gong and Asian table setting
Attention-getter of the exhibit: the original Thai pavilion as a classic example of
world-renowned Thai architecture. The pavilion is a roofed-over building of wood with
a rectangular basic structure, and it is regarded as the place of eastern relaxation
and meditation. Embedded in the pavilion is a showcase with typical eating and
cooking chopsticks, a 2-person Asian table setting and authentic porcelain. The
gong is a large, flat metal plate with typical percussion bulb and turned-over edge.
Its specific characteristic is its deep and deeply-resonant sound.
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• Real machine part
Housing wheel with a diameter of 1.4 metres: this wheel is used to break up the
stalks and soil is mixed in. This way, the soil is fertilised and prepared for the next
season.
• Rice sledge with collar: until 50 years ago, sledges like this were used around the
world for sowing. The rice plants were bundled and placed on sledges drawn by
horses, donkeys or buffalo. They were then thrown out to the farmers in the rice field
for transplanting.
• Large-format display boards
Artistically-designed display boards with interesting photos and texts accompany the
impressive exhibit and inform clearly about the rice harvest, types of rice, growth
phases, blights and how to combat them, composition of rice, development of
high-yield varieties, biotechnology, possibilities for water supply and land reclamation
for new cultivation areas, etc.
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4. Interactivity
A booth attendant / hostess / animatrice is present 36 hours a week.
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To answer the questions of interested visitors
To inspire curiosity among the visitors
To invite for free tours
Video presentations
To explain the modules, professional information dissemination
Support of the building table with games
Knowledge games
All schools from the 7th form on have the opportunity to participate in a 1-hour tour
or a morning programme. The content of the explanations is adjusted to the age and
knowledge of the young people. The exhibit modules and the films are didactic and
address the curriculum topics geography, world and environmental science, physics,
sociology, economics and politics.
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5. Communication to success
Hartmann Event makes exhibits available in German and French. The service package
also contains the following elements:
External communication
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Press documents for inviting media representatives
Texts for inviting schools to tours
Exhibit photos in the desired format for your advertising
Exhibit logos in the desired format for your advertising
Information for your Internet presence
All text of the display boards and descriptions
Complete support of your advertising campaign
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Participation of Irene or Michel Hartmann in press conferences
Tours for schools and interested parties
Hostess introduces herself to the businesses
Answering of questions
Signaling of the various exhibition modules
Organisation of games or contests
Internal communication
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