Beautiful! The above beautiful image is a beautiful source of lessons in climate change, which is an important consideration for the New PH Agriculture with Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie.
There are 4 things wrongwith it:
(1) Too much water.
(2) Seedlings too old.
(3) Root systems of seedlings injuriously cut.
(4) Farmer will apply nitrogen fertilizer unnecessarily.
Water
When you transplant rice, a damp soil is enough, not flooded like that. You are wasting water. So what? You are contributing to climate change!
Seedlings
When you transplant seedlings that old, you have had standing water in your seedbed far longer than you should. Think of how many million farmers are doing this, and you will appreciate how this wrong seedbed practice affects the climate.
And why are such rice seedlings too old to transplant? They are no longer young and therefore no longer have the youthful ability to withstand stress. In the System of Rice Intensification, SRI, seedlings of only 2 weeks old are transplanted, which can easily recover from the transplanting shock.
Nitrogen Fertilizer
Since the old seedlings transplanted cannot recover quickly, the farmer applies nitrogen fertilizer so that he can see his seedlings green again. He does not realize it was he who made it necessary to apply the N fertilizer because he transplanted old seedlings that have parts of their root systems cut off, restricting water and plant foods naturally delivered to the stem and leaves.
Planting in squares with 1 seedling per hill – each seedling will enjoy a good microclimate because each one will produce its maximum number of tillers, which are the ones that produce the grains.
If the farmer transplants earlier, seedlings will recover fast – no need for the farmer to apply nitrogen fertilizer just to see his seedlings green, just like my father Lakay Disiong did. That’s saving on chemical fertilizer, saving on nitrates that cause climate change, if you forgot.
Root system
At this stage, a rice seedling already has grown a good root system and you destroy that system by carelessly pulling the seedling out of the soil.
The root system is the one that supplies water and minerals to the plant. How then can seedlings like those shown above, with parts of their roots cut off, recover easily from transplanting shock?
Rice has a shallow root system[1]; in some photographs, you see long roots being shown – those are mostly anchor roots, to keep the rice in place. Actually, the feeder roots of rice do not grow downward but sideward, searching for food. That is why each seedling needs all the space it can get, and that is why strictly square planting of single rice seedlings per hill under SRI is an intelligent design.
Good farmer entrepreneurship: A good rice farmer saves on water, seedlings, and fertilizer. If the farmer saves such, that’s good business sense, that’s entrepreneurship. And it’s good for the environment – the farmer is doing us a favor in terms of climate change without him (or us) realizing it!@517
No comments:
Post a Comment