Doing Right With Rice – A Few Roman Catholic Lessons From Madagascar

If you look at this Rappler photo of a single farmer planting rice, it looks like it’s not a big deal and he doesn’t mind being alone in his work.

He should! He is doing it all wrong! All Filipino farmers are doing it all wrong!

I mean, transplanting rice. Unless you are using now the transplanter, you are going the wrong way of transplanting rice.

The man is transplanting rice wrongly, and he does not realize it. And probably neither do you!

It was only early this morning, Tuesday, 07 July 2020 Manila time when I Roman Catholic realized that we Filipinos have been planting rice all wrong since the beginning. Well, we inherited it from the Chinese, from whom we learned rice farming, plowing, etc. The Chinese are smart when they are, but not in this one.

So, here are My 5 Rice Lessons for you today, rich, poor, doctor, farmer:

1.     PS. 

2.     PS.

3.     PS.

4.     PS.

5.     PS!

(1)   Plant Singly.
Plant 1 seedling per hill, no more. This is a lesson from the System of Rice Intensification, SRI, compiled over the years by Roman Catholic Fr Henri de Laulanie SJ that he developed in Madagascar, where only 1 individual seedling is pushed  into a hill and no more. This is for maximum growth of the seedling, that is, in producing the necessary tillers for grains production. This is contrary to the usual practice of bunch transplanting, which results in too few tillers – so? Low yield.

(2)   Plant Squarely.
Plant each seedling equidistant from each other. Again, a lesson from the Catholic SRI. Use either 15 x 15 cm or 20 x 20 cm spacing. Each seedling in those squares will grow robust and to its maximum, because of the available wide space between competing roots from opposite hills. Robust seedlings will grow robust tillers – equals robust harvests! It is the Lesson of the Tillers that Filipino farmers have not learned  from the Catholics! The fastest way to plant squarely? Use a mechanical transplanter.

(3)   Plant Soon.
Plant when the seedling is still very young, 2 weeks old, another lesson from us Catholics. The usual Filipino farmer practice is to plant 1-month old seedlings. Too old! There is always a transplanting shock, and the young ones can take it without much trouble, recovering fast, unlike older seedlings. I wonder why Filipino farmers have not seen this with their own eyes?!

(4)   Plant Seed.
Plant, don’t transplant – plant the seeds directly, not raise them on a seedbed first and then transplant. No transplanting shock, no additional labor – the seed grows into a seedling, and the seedling grows into a plant without much ado. Why do rice seedlings grow yellow a few days after transplanting? That is transplanting shock – they are trying to recover their health.

(5)   Plant Smartly.
Plant using a seeder or a transplanter. That’s how to get square planting automatically. This is to avoid having to measure out all those squares in the field.

This is a Roman Catholic speaking!@517