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Using the BD farming method to deep-plow the soil 70 cm for rice cultivation saves water and retains fertilizer

General News By Emily Carter 0 views

Two years ago Taiwan, China was hit by its worst drought in a decadeyet these past two years each typhoon has been stronger than the last

Wu Shui-yun practices BD agriculture, conserving both water and water use

The Agricultural Engineering Research Center recently held an expert forum on "Analysis of Key Issues in Agricultural Water Resources," inviting Wu Shui-yun to share his experience from four years of practicing Bio-Dynamic Agriculture (BD agriculture). This farming method can save water, retain water, and also greatly reduce the amount of fertilizer needed.

Wu Shui-yun said that modern farming methods cannot help the soil retain water, because when a tractor plows the land it goes at most 30 cm deep, and the soil below 30 cm is compacted by the tractor's operation, forming a "plow pan." The plow pan is almost as hard as concrete, so rainwater naturally finds it very hard to seep down and instead runs off the surface. In this vicious cycle, water shortages become more and more serious.

Want to make the soil hold on to water? Wu Shui-yun points out that "you have to break through the plow pan." The BD agriculture he practices uses deep plowing: after one rice harvest and before rotating in green manure, first break through the traditional plow pan. "A deep plow can plow as deep as 70 cm, and together with soil cracks that open naturally to as deep as one meter, it can retain more rainwater."

Irrigation associations: the entrenched logic needs to be loosened

Lin Meng-hui, head of the Crop Improvement Section at the Taoyuan District Agricultural Research and Extension Station, pointed out that the station actually has a set of "optimal irrigation amount recommendations" for various crops, and once the recommended amount of water has been applied, no more water should be released. But this recommended model has never been able to mesh with the irrigation associations' water-release systems. Irrigation associations mostly release water once every seven days, and because of their expectations farmers fill up their storage, leading to excessive water use. If irrigation associations could switch from managing by number of days to managing by volume of water, the water shortage problem could be eased.

Yuan Dao-an, head of the Irrigation Section at the Taoyuan Irrigation Association, said that the association actually does use a water-volume management model for releasing water, but usually on the first release the downstream farmland does not necessarily receive the water, so releasing again after seven days is meant to make up the amount of water needed by downstream farmland.

Yuan Dao-an said that on top of that, the average annual rainfall varies from year to year, making it hard to operate entirely according to the principles recommended by the research and extension station. Moreover, the Taoyuan jurisdiction has 20,000 hectares of paddy fields, yet the actual number of management staff is fewer than 100, meaning each person on average has to manage 200 hectares, while also handling management work such as irrigation channels, sluice gates and ponds. The management load is very large, and the shortage of manpower is another big headache. On top of that, elderly farmers who have farmed their whole lives already have their own set of water-use patterns, so how to loosen these requires more thought.

A representative from the Irrigation Management Section of the Council of Agriculture's Farmland Irrigation Division mentioned that the use of water resources should be discussed by region. For example, the sandy soil of the east has the innate conditions to break through the plow pan and absorb more groundwater, but the west does not have such conditions, so more discussion is needed.

News glossary - BD agriculture:

Founded in 1924 by the organic agriculture organization DEMETER, this is an organic farming method it is committed to promoting. This method treats animals and plants, the ecological environment, the Earth's movements and the changes of the stars as one living organism, and advocates an organic farming method that does not pollute the environment, returns to nature and restores soil vitality.

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