“Rice. It Takes 5,000 Liters Of Water To Produce A Kilo Of Rice. Every Grain Counts.” Every Drop Counts!

On Facebook, above, I was horrified to read: “Rice. It takes 5,000 liters of water to produce a kilo of rice. Every grain counts.”

My reaction was: Isn’t that insane!? My God! Woefully, we are wasting water! Every drop counts!
(“Creative ways to save water[1]” image from Ecolife)

Is that piece of pinoyrice.com data wrong? I googled, and IRRI says that in India and the Philippines, the average is about 3,000 liters of water to produce 1 kilo of rice[2] (Knowledge Bank, IRRI.org). Not 5,000. So, that rice data is 40% wrong!

Actually, IRRI contradicts itself; elsewhere but in the same website, Rice Knowledge Bank, it says, “It takes 1,432 liters of water to produce 1 kg of rice[3].” So that rice data is 71% wrong!

Still, I question the 1,432 liters. I am an Agriculturist, a farmer’s son, and I went to the fields with my farmer father a few times, including harvesting rice with scythe. (Unfortunately, I sliced my left thumb, end of learning!)

I know that irrigation water in rice is used to flood the field, for several reasons:

(1) Control weed growth – Weed seeds cannot germinate.

(2) Control pest population – Insects & other organisms cannot thrive.

(3) Control disease occurrence – Soil-borne disease-causing organisms are killed.

What about methane and nitrous oxide emissions from flooded rice fields[4], as pointed out by BO Sander, KM Samson & RJ Buresh (Climate & Clean Air Coalition)? I never liked flooded ricefields since the first time I saw them!

We can avoidflooded ricefields. The creative cultivation technique?

Rotavate the field in such a way that you create an automatic organic matter layer all over the field!

This is an original technique I came up with many years ago. This results in the following:

(1)No weed growth because the weeds & their seeds are mechanically & biologically destroyed once and for all!

(2)Soil-borne disease-causing organisms are killed 100% along with the weeds.

(3)The soil all over the field is enriched with natural organic matter. 

(4)The soil is moist throughout the growing season because of the organic matter that has been laid on the surface of the whole field, trapping enough water from the rain as well as from capillary water rising from underground.

Sounds too good to be true? In fact, my brother-in-law Lorenzo Casasus has been practicing my rotavation technique with rice in the last 45 years in our hometown Asingan in Pangasinan – and has been consistently outyielding much his neighbor farmers! That technique came from me, from my wide reading and musings. I told him not to teach the technique, selfish me.

In any case, I personally challenge PhilRice for me to demonstrate what I have just described, either in Batac, Ilocos Norte; PhilRice Maligaya headquarters; or UP Los Baños PhilRice Station. Since I’m a poor man, all expenses must be shouldered by PhilRice.

No time/water to lose! A World-Wide Revolution in Rice Agriculture coming up!@517

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[1]https://www.ecolifeconservation.org/updates/creative-ways-to-save-water/

[2]http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/ericeproduction/III.1_Water_usage_in_rice.htm

[3]http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/step-by-step-production/growth/water-management#:~:text=Continuous%20flooding%20helps%20ensure%20sufficient%20water%20and%20control%20weeds.&text=On%20average%2C%20it%20takes%201%2C432,an%20irrigated%20lowland%20production%20system.

[4]https://www.ccacoalition.org/en/resources/methane-and-nitrous-oxide-emissions-flooded-rice-fields-affected-water-and-straw