Step 18: Natural farming: It works!

We can now give the yield of our first trial of rice production using full natural farming protocol and drum seeder ofPhilrice: 106 cavans (40 kg) of palay after threshering.

This result has to be compared to the 35 cavans of the former conventional farmer one year ago. He was using a little chemical fertilizer because he could not afford the recommended quantities. Despite insecticide sprayings his rice beds were attacked by pests. We didn’t use one gram of any chemical and spend a very few money to prepare the concoctions. The main cost was the vermicompost because we cannot prepare it now in the farm and of course the labor because we are not in a family farming structure.

This good result can not only be attributed to the strict spraying program of natural farming with LCC control but also to other natural farming techniques including:
- Choice of good hybrid variety,
- Leveling of the bed with a tolerance of more or less 2 cm,
- Application of different management techniques:
# Direct wet seeding with drum seeder at rate 40 kg/ha,
# Manual and roto-weeding,
# Trap for rats,
# Lure for birds,
# Hand picking, small canals and bamboo sticks to get eggs for snails,
# Selective attractant for insects especially moths of rice borers,
# Weekly spraying of rice pest repellant (Kakawate/Makabuhay/chili).

Our quest of increasing of production is not finished. The points we have now to improve are:
- Better water management with alternate of drying and watering beds and respect of depth of water according to the age of the crop. This will be possible with a large source of water coming from the future wind mill.
- More quantity of organic matter,
- Use of rototiller to mix more rapidly remaining of last crop with the soil. We spend too much time and manpower in land preparation between two crops.
- Work on the use and quality of seaweed concoction to provide more vegetal hormones.
We must also keep in mind that it is also possible the season has been particularly favorable to the raising of rice. It is impossible to attribute to each parameter a percent of effect on the final result.