Christmas Fish
9 hours ago
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Rice farmer
This article caught my eye. It's about a way farmers are significantly increasing the yield of rice and other crops. There's no special soil additives, pesticides, or GMOS. It's a pretty low tech planting and field management system that works. No one has to buy anything or pay a license fee.
There are countries backing the method and millions are now using it. This is huge. One of the arguments against the system is that so far it hasn't scaled up well to big commercial operations. I looked at that as a plus. Nothing wrong with the little guy getting the advantage once in a while. I see a lot of articles and videos about problems that plague the common people. Rarely do I see solutions.
-Sixbears
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It is easier to complain about problems than to come up with ways of fixing them.
ReplyDeleteThat's why making note of something positive once in a while is a good thing.
DeleteThe reason the companies are against it is because there's no way to corner the market on free family labor.
ReplyDeleteYes, and there is nothing for them to sell.
DeleteThanks for the link on rice. It amazes me the folks growing crops without all the inputs. We are now applying wood chips to our beds, last fall, and are already seeing results with healthy appearing garlic, compared to last year. We are following Paul Gautschi's method. Just google his name. I'm finding others who have been using this method for several years and report very good results too. No inputs required! Love it!
ReplyDeleteBexar
Small growers can do things that commercial operations can't, and I think that's great.
DeleteThe sad part is, these results are not particularly new or remarkable. What is especially not surprising is that they come from a country where labor is cheap. Hidden in the description is a reference to intensive weeding. It has long been known that yields per area can be greatly increased at the cost of greatly decreasing the yield per hour worked. So this could be every bit as unsustainable as a man in a 50 foot combine. The real question is, does the extra yield make up for the extra work required?
ReplyDeleteI'm betting it does, especially for people with few resources.
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