Raising small birds in the rice field, this is how I did it

12,000 jin! This is the rice harvest of Master Guixian this year, and at the same time... the amount eaten by sparrows!

This year Master Guixian used microbial bacteria plus rice wine as fertilizer, breaking through rice-growing techniques, and this was the best quality in his seven years of growing rice since returning home. Two weeks before harvest, he went to Wufeng to attend an advanced training course on high-quality rice. He showed the rice ears in his field to the teacher, who was greatly startled! "Natural farming cannot possibly grow rice this beautiful!" The teacher concluded that after this batch of rice was dried, each fen of land would yield at least 1,000 jin! Master Guixian also told the teacher that he was growing rice in Kouhu, Yunlin, where the wind blows at the head and the water runs off at the tail, and they found it even more unbelievable! "The rice is sure to be knocked down by the strong southwest wind, it cannot possibly grow this well!"

The teachers were surprised by Master Guixian's way of growing rice, and they did not hesitate to praise him. Master Guixian was very happy, full of expectation, "Wow! This year there will surely be a great harvest!" He thought that this year's yield should be able to make up for the shortfall from netizens' orders last year, and that he and his girlfriend Ma Niu should be able to eat naturally safe, nontoxic rice they grew themselves!

After the 10-day training course ended, he returned to the field. "Wow! I'm finished!" The rice ears that had originally been full and drooping suddenly raised their backs and stood straight, waving at him. He said that during those days the eagle kites might not have been working seriously, and the sparrows poured out of their nests, eating his rice until only half was left!

The goddess of fortune brushed past him once again.

Master Guixian both loves and hates sparrows. He likes them catching insects in the rice field, "but their wages are really too high! In no time they ate half my yield!" He gave a few bitter laughs, "There is really no way around it!" He was unwilling to poison them and damage the ecology, so he had no choice but to let them eat. It was just that having the yield cut in half meant heavy losses. He said that if his nontoxic rice farming was to continue sustainably, he would have to ask friends to help pay the cost of raising the little birds. If he sold rice at last year's price, he might not be able to continue growing rice next year.

Some farmers' rice lodges or sprouts on the ear, but Master Guixian's rice is not afraid of wind! Not afraid of rain! Not afraid of pests and diseases! "But it is very afraid of little birds!" Bird damage gave him endless trouble. Over these years, Master Guixian's rice-growing techniques had improved a lot, but the bird damage problem had never been overcome.

Many farming friends told Guixian to use pesticides to poison the birds. His mother also said, "The money for just two or three eagle kites can buy one large bird net," but Guixian felt that little birds and people all have life, and he was unwilling to sacrifice the lives of little birds to achieve his own benefit.

Master Guixian did not want to pump groundwater to grow rice, so he transplanted rice two months later than others and harvested two months later, and also suffered more serious bird damage than other farmers. He had once considered growing rice at the same time as everyone else to reduce farming losses. But he felt that everyone was desperately pumping groundwater, the land kept sinking, and once seawater poured in, good farmland would become wetland and could no longer produce crops.

In just 20 years, Kouhu already had four to five hundred hectares of farmland turned into wetland or abandoned land because of insufficient water sources. Guixian felt that agricultural water was allocated to industry, while farmers who wanted to farm had no water for irrigation. "People regard food as heaven, and the nation takes agriculture as its foundation" sounded very nice and also very ironic, he said helplessly! Farmers were forced to pump groundwater to grow rice, and the future wealth of the next generation was continually being taken away and taken away. Bird damage and farming losses, and land subsidence, had become the lingering nightmare of Kouhu farmers, yet they still could not avoid taking sides. Master Guixian sighed, "Exactly how many more four or five hundred hectares of land in Kouhu Township can be squandered like this?"