The grain-growing journey of large-scale grain farmer Chen Mengqing

    "I am a 'lazy' farmer, and I like to farm in a leisurely way!" Yesterday morning, standing at the edge of a field in Zhengjiabao natural village, Xihu village, Fenghui town, Shangyu city, large-scale grain farmer Chen Mengqing joked to reporters. This year, Chen Mengqing planted more than 80 mu of early rice, including more than 30 mu of plowed machine transplanting, 15 mu of no-till direct seeding, nearly 30 mu of no-till seedling throwing, and he also innovatively planted 6 mu of fields using no-till machine transplanting. "Next year, I will plant all my early rice using no-till machine transplanting!" he said.

Chen Mengqing is 61 years old this year and has been growing rice for decades. Starting in 1995, he learned two light cultivation techniques, rice direct seeding and seedling throwing, and actively tried them, becoming by a single effort the farmer in Fenghui town who used new techniques to grow rice the most.

In 2000, he tried not using machines to plow the land, and instead simply leveled the field and used direct seeding and seedling throwing methods to grow early rice. As a result, the effects of no-till direct seeding and no-till seedling throwing were very good, and the early rice yield remained stable at around 400 kg per mu. More importantly, doing this saved the cost of plowing the field. Over time, farmers in surrounding villages learned the no-till technique from him one after another, and Fenghui became the place in Shangyu with the most "no-till rice growing."

Last year, Chen Mengqing also learned rice machine transplanting technology. This year, he plowed and machine-transplanted more than 30 mu of early rice, and without forgetting the "no-till" habit, he tried planting 6 mu of early rice using no-till machine transplanting.

"Experiments prove that the growth of early rice grown with no-till and with plowing differs very little." Chen Mengqing said that based on the current growth analysis, a later high yield is almost certain, and the goal of saving labor and cost through no-till machine transplanting has already been achieved.

He introduced that compared with plowed machine transplanting, no-till machine transplanting technology is also relatively simple. First, the field is required to be relatively level and suitable for transplanter operation; second, before transplanting, weeds must be removed and impurities cleared, and the field should be irrigated and soaked in advance to achieve an effect similar to plowing. After the seedlings are transplanted into the field, the management method is no different from plowed machine transplanting.

Reporters learned from the Shangyu City Agriculture, Forestry, Fishery and Animal Husbandry Bureau that, regarding Chen Mengqing's original no-till machine transplanting technology, relevant units of the bureau also explored it on a small scale this year. From the experiment at the early rice machine transplanting high-yield demonstration area in Changtang town, the early rice under no-till machine transplanting tillered normally and grew well. Compared with plowed machine transplanting, early rice under no-till machine transplanting is also unlikely to lodge later. Calculations show that after using no-till machine transplanting technology, at least 110 yuan to 115 yuan per mu can be saved on mechanical plowing and land preparation costs. After deducting the additional 15 yuan per mu paid for herbicide, about 100 yuan can still be saved.

Chen Zhongqiu, chief agricultural technology master of the grain and oil industry in Shangyu city, said that no-till technology can ensure that the soil structure of farmland is not destroyed, reduce machine and energy consumption, and improve fertility, but over the long term it may lead to soil compaction. Deep soil tillage technology has an obvious weed control effect, but it easily destroys soil structure. Academia has multiple views on this, and the latest view advocates shallow tillage or reduced tillage. From the trial situation, no-till machine transplanting technology has an obvious effect in saving labor and cost, and next year Shangyu will promote it within a certain range as appropriate.