The Betsileo (Bts) are one of approximately twenty "ethnies," or ethnic units, into which Madagascar divides its population. The Betsileo began to use that term for themselves after their conquest by the Merina in the nineteenth century. The Betsileo are peasants -- agriculturists in a state-organized society. They grow rice, their preferred and staple food, on permanent plots that are cultivated with a single annual rice crop from year to year. They supplement a diet of rice and beef with other livestock (pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, guinea fowl, turkeys; formerly goats and sheep) and many secondary crops.