Fair Earth Farm Rice Planting Party – 10 JUL 2010

People of all ages and levels of rice-planting experience joined our 4th annual Fair Earth Farm rice planting party last Saturday. Old and new friends had a chance to discuss our experiments with rice, including the innovative System of Rice Intensification (SRI), have a go in the paddy, share meals and have a fine time. A few photos from this year’s  party.

This activity was part of a project we’re doing with help from the Asian Institute of Technology’s Bio-innovations Asia program. The project is trying to understand the transmission of knowledge about natural farming in Chiang Mai Province.

Many thanks to all!

Photos by Dan Powell.

Note on methods: System of Rice Intensification
The slogan of SRI is “growing more with less”: less seed, less water, less inputs. The emphasis is on growing rice plants with deep and strong root systems, which results in better plant development and higher yields. Essentially, SRI uses seedlings which are younger (8-10 days old) and fewer (1-3 per hill) than most conventional practices, with wider spacing (25-40 cm. x 25-40 cm.).

Furthermore, SRI fields are not kept flooded during the growing season, but rather intermittent flooding is practiced (e.g. 3 days wet/7 days dry) for “just-moist” conditions until the panicle stage, during which a thin layer of water (1-2 cm.) is kept over the field.

In general, SRI employs more careful practices than is the norm in northern Thailand, especially during transplanting, when great care is taken when uprooting the young seedlings before quickly and gently transplanting them. SRI requires more frequent weeding than is normal, but this is seen as an opportunity by its proponents, who argue that the use of rotary tillers can help aerate the soil and return organic matter (in this case weeds) to the soil.