The One-Straw Revolution - Multiworld India

hundred plants, ten or twenty percent of the stalks may be white. Insevere cases, when it appears as though the whole crop has been ruined,the actual damage is about thirty percent.To try to avoid this loss, one field of rice was sprayed withinsecticide to kill the stem borers; another field was left untreated. Whenthe results were calculated it turned out that the untreated field withmany withered stalks had the higher yield. At first I could not believe itmyself and thought it was an experimental error. But the data appeared tobe accurate, so I investigated further.What happened was that by attacking the weaker plants the stemborers produced a kind of thinning effect. The withering of some stemsleft more room for the rest of the plants. Sunlight was then able topenetrate to the lower leaves. These remaining rice plants grew morestrongly as a result, sent up more grain-bearing stalks, and producedmore grains to the head than they could have without the thinning. Whenthe density of stalks is too great and insects do not thin out the excess,the plants look healthy enough, but in many cases the harvest is actuallylower.Looking at the many research testing center reports you can find theresults of using practically every chemical spray on record. But it isgenerally not realized that only half of these results are reported. Ofcourse there is no intention of hiding anything, but when the results arepublished by the chemical companies as in advertisements, it is the sameas if the conflicting data had been concealed. Results which show loweryields, as in the experiment with the stem borers, are checked off asexperimental discrepancies and discarded. There are, of course, cases inwhich insect extermination results in increased yields, but there are othercases in which the yield is72