FURUNO Takao

Publisher TAGARI Publications, Australia
Price 24US$

• Another interesting cultivation system for rice is the "integrated duck and rice cultivation system". In this system, ducks ("aigamo" in Japan) are allowed to stay and swim around in the rice field from shortly after seedling transplanting. The ducks eat the weeds as they sprout (but not the rice seedlings as they do not like the rice plant's stiff, high-silica leaves) and any insects that may land on the rice plants. The ducks' excreta then fertilize the soil providing nutrients for the rice growth. The ducks perform the function of pesticides and herbicides and chemical fertilizer, thereby saving the farmer a lot of toil, money and worry (weeding is one of the greatest problems in Japanese agriculture). This system is sometimes used with azolla (a nitrogen-fixing floating grass, which is very fast-growing, and which the ducks will feed on) and sometimes also fish (e.g. loach, which the ducks do not eat because they cannot see the fish beneath the azolla!) A well-known practitioner husband and wife team of this system, Mr. Takao Furuno and his wife in Keisen Town, Fukuoka Prefecture has obtained yields of 6,470 kg/ha of unpolished rice, where the average rice yield in his area is 3,830 kg/ha.(181) He uses no chemical fertilizers or pesticides. In fact, if you visit him, you have to watch where you walk as his neighbors use chemicals and he does not want any of them trudged near his fields. Here again the key factors are animal excreta and soil fertility. These are the determinants of yields, not chemical fertilizers.