$37.00 $25.90 $11.10
The Power of Duck. Integrated Rice and Duck Farming. By Takao Furuno. Tagari Publications.
A beautiful case history of sustainable
agriculture - Very finely worked out...
Bill Mollison
•®
Testamonial
From Soil and Health, New Zealand, Vol 59 No 1
'One bird -ten thousand treasures' by Mae-Wan Ho
'Farmers have increased their yield by 20 to 50 per cent or more in the first year. One farmer in Laos increased his income three-fold. Without a doubt, their method is a boom to Third World farmers.'
'You can clearly see the difference between the plants in the Aigamo plots and the control plots without Aigamo. In fact, the ducks are so good at weeding that Third World farmers who have adopted Takao's method now have time to sit and chat instead of spending up to 240 hours per hectare in manual weeding every year. Besides, 'pests' and 'weeds' have been miraculously transformed into resources for rearing ducks.'
'The Aigamo paddy field, then, is a complex, well-balanced, self-maintaining, self-propogating ecosystem. The only external input is the small amount of waste grain fed to the ducks, and the output is a delicious, nutritious harvest of organic rice, duck and loach.'
'Organic farming need not be labour-intensive; it is fun!' says Takao Furuno emphatically.
'By using human imagination and ingenuity, and by cooperating with nature rather than re-engineering it, Takao Furuno has cleared yet another path for a safe, diverse and sustainable agricultural future. So who needs transgenic crops?'
(from Soil and Health, February 2000, ?? 36-37)
(Mae-Wan Ho, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK)
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