Planting fan club rush on rice paddy bunds, beautiful as a green dragon

When weeds grow thick and wild around rice paddy field ridges, farmers often habitually spray herbicides; but not only does buying herbicide cost money and leave the ridges bare, whenever heavy rain falls the ridges are more often eroded and washed away by the rainwater. In recent years, Lin Qingyuan, a farmer in Donggang, Pingtung, has planted mugwort-leaved tick-trefoil (Desmodium triflorum) on the field ridges, lush with greenery, just like a "green dragon," and it has also gradually restored the farmland ecosystem, balancing landscape and ecological value, with many benefits.

Although herbicides can quickly clear weeds, the ridge landscape is destroyed, and overuse of herbicides also causes ecological damage and affects rice growth and human health.

Lin Qingyuan began experimenting with planting grass 3 years ago, and finally chose mugwort-leaved tick-trefoil. "Mugwort-leaved tick-trefoil is very easy to plant and grows fast; once a small patch is established, with adequate water it will spread, and after it grows out, other weeds cannot grow" he said. Mugwort-leaved tick-trefoil cannot extend into the paddy field, so its root system will not affect the rice crop, and a dense mat of mugwort-leaved tick-trefoil covering the entire ridge also harbors rich ecology; frogs most like to hide inside it and eat the mosquitoes and insects in the paddy fields, reducing the chance of pests and diseases, and relatively reducing pesticide use.

By calculation, with Lin Qingyuan's current roughly 30-plus hectares of paddy fields, after planting mugwort-leaved tick-trefoil on the ridges, pesticide costs are reduced by nearly 300,000 yuan a year, enough to hire someone to manage the paddy fields.

In the future, this method will be introduced to plant under Irwin mango trees on hillside land; if the promotion succeeds, it will have soil and water conservation functions.

At present, the Pingtung County Government is promoting grass cover cultivation in hillside orchards, which is to reduce pesticide use and on the other hand also has a soil and water conservation function, hoping that through the promotion of mugwort-leaved tick-trefoil, orchards will also be lushly green.

Lin Qingyuan himself is also chairman of the National Rice Association; at 9:30 a.m. on October 5 (Sat.), he will hold a mugwort-leaved tick-trefoil ecological rice demonstration and observation meeting at Tzu Hui Institute of Technology in Nanzhou Township, where farmers can come to exchange ideas, and a small patch of mugwort-leaved tick-trefoil will also be provided on site for visitors to take home and try planting for free.