The New Organic: It's A Revolution!

MANILA: You're looking at my original photograph of a ricefield, taken 17 May 2015 at 1036 hours along the TPLEX highway; I'm sure it's in Pangasinan because I can see Mt Balungao in the distance. As an agriculturist who happens to be a teacher, I say you are looking at 2 big mistakes in farming.

The image shows furrows of water and rows of rice stalks dried up. I don't know what the farmer is up to, but whatever it is, it's a waste of resources, including time. This is too much water being lost to the clouds, and too much plant nutrients being lost to the air. Earlier, the rice stalks could have been recycled into the soil, as in green manuring, and they could have given back much of what they had taken from the soil in the form of rice grains, the farmer's harvest. This is clean-culture agriculture, and the ultimate source of knowledge for this for every Filipino farmer must have been the University of the Philippines' College of Agriculture that was established by the Americans in March 1909 in Los Baños, Laguna. To me, it shows that the Americans are not always right! I guess those dried up stalks will end up being collected and burned sooner or later. Or, did we learn burning hay from the Chinese, from whom we owe the plow and the carabao? That means the Chinese don't know everything either.

Burning ricefields make me cry – they are burning plant nutrients and water (see my previous essay, "Advantage Farming," 05 June 2015, The New Organic, blogspot.com); the above scene makes me cry more – they are disturbing the vegetation unnecessarily and introducing irrigation too early, and it's probably from a shallow tube well, which is added cost to the farmer as well as to the environment.

In any case, with the above image, I am launching a one-man revolution today, Friday, 05 June 2015; I'm calling it The New Organic, which is also the name of this new blog of mine. (The creation of the blog and the posting of this essay were delayed by one day, because of a local brownout.)

But first, let me explain how this has come about.

First, it started with my idea of WILLs, which first was the acronym for Water Is Life, Love, in both science and sense (see my essay, WILLs, 03 June 2015, The New Organic, blogspot.com; actually, it first appeared in my blog Water Is Life, Love, but which I have deleted).

WILLs, now slightly revised to Water Is Life, Learning from both science & sense, then gave birth to my idea of ground-generated agriculture, acronym gea, that which I explained as that this type of agriculture coming from following the basic laws of nature, 2 of which are the cycle of life and death and degradation of the organic material into its original forms (see my earlier essay today, Advantage Farming, 05 June 2015, which also first appeared in that now-deleted blog and I have moved to The New Organic,blogspot.com).

Here is applied gea:

First thing right after harvest, plow the field with a Howard rotavator or your hand tractor with those inverted L blades. Set the depth of cut so that the blades will go 2 inches into the soil, not deeper. When you do that, the blades cut both into the crop refuse and the soil in that same downward-upward stroke, mixing the pieces of vegetation (including weeds) and soil together. What that gives you is a compost pile already nicely spread all over your field, ready to rot. In a little while, you begin to have an organic topsoil in all those rotavated places.

I have just described to you my process invention, that which I now call organic rotavation, which is the cutting & mixing of soil &vegetation withinthe topsoil. No more, no less. It's the fastest and most intelligent way of composting.

Organic rotavation is neither zero tillage nor minimum tillage; on the contrary, it is maximum tillage with minimum depth. The cut & mix is more disturbing of the soil than any plowing and/or harrowing, and yet it is this very soil disturbance that gives it a higher probability for crop abundance, because the organic matter decomposes within the top soil layer, where crop seeds or seedlings begin to grow.

By the way, organic rotavation can be applied in a smaller scale to gardens that are not elevated or boxed. 

Still, organic rotavation is only the beginning of what I shall now call The New Organic, a revolution of the head and hands, theoretical and practical. Especially with the extended stay of El Niño in the Philippines, this year, The New Organic calls for:

(1)     Stopping all burning of crop refuse anywhere, as it can be better used as organic matter to enrich the soil.

(2)     Stopping all irrigation prior to plowing the field. In organic rotavation, irrigation at any level is entirely unnecessary.

(3)     Stopping all plowing of fields except by rotavator. The moldboard plow cuts large chunks of soil and piles them on top of each other; the rotavator cuts small pieces of vegetation and soil and mixes them in one stroke. The plow exposes the soil to loss of moisture and plant nutrients; the rotavator conserves both moisture and nutrients.

(4)     Keeping the soil alive with diverse forms of fauna and flora, especially the decomposers such as bacteria, fungi and earthworms.These plants and animals decompose the organic matter and release the water and plant nutrients in them, building up the soil. The organic matter stores the water in the soil, not releases it to the atmosphere. Germs, molds and bugs are our BFF: best field friends.

(5)     Organic rotavation of all fields, whether for rice, corn or tobacco or some other crops.Since the depth of cut is lower, the rotavator or hand tractor spends much less energy than with the use of the disc plow.

In The New Organic Revolution, everybody is a winner, including the environment; nobody is the loser, except the sellers of moldboard plows, chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

How can The New Organic get rid of farm chemicals that have been the staple food for thought of farmers since at least 55 years ago? Not immediately, but within 2 years, the organic topsoil will have been enriched so much that no additional fertilizers will be necessary. If the soil is healthy, the crops that grow in there will also be healthy; if the crops are healthy, they can resist the "attacks" of insects and other species who would be pest, and therefore there is no need to spray chemicals.

In fact, the New Organic as theory is new but the practice is old. Lorenzo Casasus, the husband of my cousin Aida Agapito Castillo, has been doing it in Asingan, Pangasinan for the last 50 years, and the results are amazing. To see is to believe.