Sunday, February 17, 2013

Successful Fukuoka style no-till farms - Some examples

Masanobu Fukuoka had practiced no-till farming for rice/wheat/barley for many years and he was getting excellent yield. His system was maintaining clover as cover crop along with grain for weed control and broadcasting grain seeds over the existing crop. This is the most simple and less effort method of grain farming, but people who tried can tell that it is not easy. The main problem will be in weed control and also finding the right cover crop, equivalent to clover is another task. 

I have seen some people trying no-till grain farming, but majority of them has failed.  A few exceptions are - Raju Titus of M.P, Shyam Shrestha of Sunrise farm, Nepal, Krishna of Solitude farm and another French blog

Here is the link of Raju Titus blog and photos of no-till rice/wheat can be seen here.

rishikheti.blogspot.com
https://picasaweb.google.com/104446847230945407735/NATURALWHEATGROWINGWITHTREES20082009?noredirect=1#

Raju Titus does not use any specific ground cover, but uses local grass itself as ground cover. People visited his farm says, the soil is very fertile and no-tilling for years has reduced weed pressure a lot. So my feeling is that this may not be easily adapted for a new comer, he has to work his own.

Another example is that of Shyam Shrestha of Sunrise farm, Nepal. I had talked to Shyam Shrestha last year and they still do no-till farming.

Their method can be seen in the following link, since it is detailed I am not describing it again.

http://ebookbrowse.com/3-no-till-pdf-d324006369

The complete book can be downloaded from http://permaculture.org.au/2010/01/06/farmers-handbook/

Here is how Krishna of Solitude farm does no-till farming. This is done by growing velvet beans as cover crop and then broadcasting rice and then cutting and mulching velvet beans above this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0xmEDq3NIs

Unfortunately yield obtained from these methods is not available.

Here is one French blog where no-till has been pictured, not able to contact this person.

http://marssfarm.centerblog.net/




4 comments:

Gowtham @ The Quest for my Passion said...

I am not sure if you have encountered this video from solitude farms of auroville of south india who also practice fukuoka type farming .Anyways here is the link and hope it would be useful for u...

http://www.aurovillepermaculture.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y0xmEDq3NIs

Nandakumar said...

Thanks Gowtham. Yes, I had seen this, will include this also in the list.

DevJ said...

I believe I read Krishna mention somewhere on FB something like 14 sacks per acre v/s 17 of the conventional (chemical+tillage) farming for rice yields.
- Dev

Nandakumar said...

Thanks Dev for this information.

Regards,
Nandan