Have you ever witnessed farmers diligently working in their green rice fields? Or, have you seen beautiful, golden rice ears waving in the breeze? God has bestowed many precious gifts upon our Earth for all beings to share, including rice, whose ears are a favorite food of birds. The leaves of rice plants provide the gentle water buffalo with sustenance.

In return, animals also help in the growth of the plants. For example, ducks leisurely walking through rice fields enhance the sprouting of seedlings and their healthy growth. Under the Creator’s perfect plan, all animals and plants thus live together in harmony.

Greetings, wise viewers, and welcome to the first in a two-part program on growing organic rice. Organic rice is superior to conventionally grown rice for a number of reasons including its cultivation which involves no spraying of chemicals that are poisonous to the environment and consumers need not worry about ingesting pesticide residue when eating this type of rice.

Today, we’re honored to hear from Mr. Chen Shih-hsiung, president of Ming Dao University in Formosa (Taiwan) and the Association of Formosa (Taiwan) Organic Agriculture Promotion, an expert on organic rice production. He will kindly describe the initial stages of rice farming and how various cultivation challenges are overcome with organic methods.

Rice has a long history dating back at least 14,000 years to ancient China, and is one of humanity’s most important staple foods, with half the world’s population consuming it daily. For people in Southeast Asian nations such as Indonesia, Âu Lạc (Vietnam) and Thailand rice on average comprises 60% of their diet.

Thailand is the world’s top exporter of rice, shipping out about 8 million tons a year. Rice comes in a variety of types, with different shapes, textures, forms and amounts of starch. Jasmine rice from Thailand and basmati rice from India are highly popular varieties because of their splendid aroma and grand taste. Being a tropical plant, rice grows best in warm, humid environments. The planting process includes seed sprouting, land preparation, seedling transplantation, weeding and harvesting.

Traditionally, farmers sprouted rice seeds on their own land, with seedlings being transplanted into the fields at about eight centimeters high. Nowadays, however, sprouting is usually done in containers in nursery gardens. President Chen will now introduce the organic way of seed sprouting.

Nowadays we have nursery gardens that can help you with seed germination before sowing. There won’t be any problem as long as you tell the nursery garden staff, not to sterilize seeds with chemical sterilization. They usually use chemical sterilization. So you need to ask them to use other methods. For example, they can use vinegar to sterilize. Bacteria are gone after vinegar sterilization. Then you start to sow.

Of course, in the process of growing, you hope the rice shoots grow stronger, so you may use some organic fertilizers such as plant ash, which increases potassium. Stems and branches grow stronger after absorbing these substances. Brine enables the partially filled seeds to float, while the filled seeds remain underwater. Then the germination rate will be better.

Land preparation involves plowing and harrowing, which make the soil soft and loose. Nutrients for rice plants are also mixed into the earth. Land preparation can help rice plants grow better. In the past, farmers had to till the land with hoes, but nowadays, the work of soil turning is done by machines.

Before you transplant seedlings, you need to plow the land. Basically, it’s best that you apply fertilizer while plowing. The best form of fertilizer is compost. If you fertilize with 4,000 kilograms of organic compost per hectare, the nutrition is enough. In fact, it’s not necessary to fertilize too much.

When the land is prepared, farmers can start to transplant seedlings. Traditionally, a kind of tool is used to mark the spots for the seedlings. When transplanting rice seedlings by hand, farmers wear a seedling-separating device on the thumb of their left hand to facilitate the work. Nowadays, however, seedling transplantation is usually done with a seedling planter, but in places with irregular, rugged topography, the transplanting still needs to be done by hand.

Theoretically speaking, leaving a bigger space between plants is preferred, so that the stems can grow stronger and the plants won’t shade one another, and thus have less insect damage and disease. So it’s better if the space between the rows can be at least 30 centimeters. Don’t plant too many rice seedlings in one spot. Many farmers put in too many.

For the first crop season, many kinds of rice can be planted, so it is enough to plant three rice seedlings in one spot. For the second crop season, since the temperatures are higher, less kinds of rice can be planted, so you can plant five to seven seedlings in one spot. With lower density and bigger space between plants, there will be less insect damage and disease.

When we return, we’ll explore other green techniques organic rice farmers use to address insects and disease affecting their plants. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to our program on organic rice production. Conventional agriculture has been heavily reliant on pesticides and herbicides to grow crops, but this approach is counterproductive. The chemicals seriously harm people, animals and the environment. A few years ago, President Chen discovered the many deleterious effects of modern farming and since has dedicated himself to promoting organic farming.

Basically, our modern agriculture is a type of lethal agriculture. During the production process when farmers spray chemical pesticides their health is affected. They inhale a lot of pesticides that are harmful to their health. Also, when the pesticides are sprayed onto the fields, not only the plant-eating bugs are killed, but also the beneficent insects. The bugs will become tougher and more resistant to the pesticides, and you will need to use a higher dose each time.

Also, pesticide residues will remain on crops and rice that we purchase and eat. After the consumers eat it, their health also gets threatened. Further, the chemicals get absorbed into the soil, and destroy all the microbes in the soil. Finally when the chemicals go into the sea they finish off all the marine life, including the plankton.

There are natural and gentle methods to cultivate the food for our table. One way is choosing to grow those species of rice which are most hardy and have the strongest immunity to disease and insects. Encouraging ducks to come into one’s field is a simple way to keep weeds under control.

President Chen says that by walking through the rice paddies, the ducks naturally step down on weeds so they will not grow and their action of walking makes the water muddy and thus also inhibits weed growth. He will now explain another green method to prevent weeds from sprouting.

To avoid weeds among fields, nowadays, farmers practice chemical farming; herbicides are used after irrigation. When the herbicides are dissolved and spread all over, all the weed seeds will die and could not sprout. However, we cannot do this in organic farming. Then what should we do?

We surely have other methods. For example, we may spread rice bran or red bean powder to the fields. Their fermentation will create heat that neutralizes weed seeds. Yet, water control is the easiest way to rid of weeds, because weeds cannot grow in deep water.

Azolla, which is also called red waterfern, because it turns red in autumn, is yet another natural technique to keep weeds at a minimum in rice fields.

We scatter azolla seeds in irrigation water to rice fields, and very soon, they will grow all over the fields. During the first crop season, the temperatures are lower so azolla grows very well. When the field is covered by azolla, no weeds can grow. This is number one. Another benefit is that azolla can form symbiotic relationships with blue-green algae, which can convert nitrogen in the air into fertilizer, so azolla is also a kind of green manure.

Chemical fertilizers are not used to grow organic rice, rather only Earth-friendly ways to nourish the crop are used.

The key to soil management is improving the ecosystem and making the organisms or microorganisms in the soil work for you. Therefore, you should put organic matter into the soil from time to time for the organisms to eat. Then they will quickly breed and work for you after feeding. So, regarding soil management for organic rice, the first principle is that you should always grow some plants in your field, even during winter time.

In Formosa, normally, farmers only grow plants in the first and second crop seasons. The rice production rate is higher in the first crop season, so we suggest you mainly grow rice plants. But during the second crop season and winter crop season, you can also grow some green manure plants, which can be plowed back into the soil to feed the organisms and microorganisms. And then they will breed rapidly and work for you in large numbers. Finally, the soil will become well-mixed, fertile and very good with a good structure. Then we can plant paddy rice again in the next crop season. So it’s pretty good.

The cost of conventionally grown rice to the environment is significant and if all rice farmers switched to organic cultivation a great burden would be lifted from our lands.

The reason that the cost of growing organic rice is so high and the cost of chemical farming is so low is that we forget to include many invisible costs. These include the environmental cost, people’s health and social costs. If we add them in and calculate carefully, we may find that using chemical pesticides and fertilizers to produce rice may cost even more than growing organic rice.

Our sincere thanks President Chen Shih-hsiung, for your detailed explanations and efforts to encourage organic rice farming. May Heaven bless your noble work, so that many more farmers will join the ranks of those practicing organic agriculture. Intelligent viewers, please join us again tomorrow for part two of our program where we’ll describe how organic rice is harvested, and becomes a fragrant dish on our dining tables.

For more details on President Chen, please visit
Thank you for your presence today on our program. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News. May we enjoy abundance and peace for all time.