The One-Straw Revolution - Multiworld India

Rice plants grown in a dry field do not grow so tall. Sunlight isreceived uniformly, reaching to the base of the plants and to the lowerleaves. One square inch of leaf is enough to produce six grains of rice.Three or four small leaves are more than enough to produce a hundredgrains of rice to the head. I sow a bit thickly and wind up with about250-300 grain-bearing stalks (20 to 25 plants) per square yard. If youhave many sprouts and do not try to grow large plants, you can reap greatharvests with no difficulty. This is also true for wheat, rye, buckwheat,oats, millet, and other grains.Of course the usual method is to keep several inches of water in thepaddy throughout the growing season. Farmers have been growing ricein water for so many centuries that most people believe that it cannot begrown any other way. The cultivated varieties of "wet-field" rice arerelatively strong if grown in a flooded field, but it is not good for theplant to be grown in this way. Rice plants grow best when the watercontent in the soil is between 60 and 80 percent of its water-holdingcapacity. When the field is not flooded plants develop stronger roots andare extremely resistant to attacks by disease and insects.The main reason for growing rice in a flooded field is to control theweeds by creating an environment in which only a limited variety ofweeds can survive. Those which do survive, however, must be pulled byhand or uprooted with a hand weeding tool. By the traditional method,this time-consuming and backbreaking job must be repeated severaltimes in each growing season.In June, during the monsoon season, I hold water in the field forabout one week. Few of the dry-field weeds can survive even so short aperiod without oxygen, and the clover also withers and turns yellow. Theidea is not to kill the clover, but only to weaken54