The Power of Duck

Integrated Rice and Duck Farming

You may not be farming either rice or ducks, but understanding the Aigamo farming method will demonstrate how much more productive a farm can be when you view your farm as an ecosystem, where all elements work together.

Farmers have increased their yield by 20 to 50% or more in the first year. Ine 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 Aigamo’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-propagating ecosystem. The only external input is the small amount of waste grain fed to the ducks, and the output is 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?