Existence principle of direct seeding rice

Analysis on the reasons for the existence of direct seeding rice

The question is, after the emergence of transplanting technology, why does direct seeding still exist in some areas?

Let's talk about transplantation first. Transplanting adds processes such as seedling raising, seedling pulling and transplanting, which makes the whole production process have a great demand for labor, especially the two links of seedling pulling and transplanting are labor-intensive jobs. Therefore, the implementation of transplantation depends on the existence of a large number of working people. In the absence of effective supply of strong labor, some elderly, weak women and children were forced to join the rice transplanting team. In traditional China society, monogamy is a production unit, where men plow and women weave, men are outside and women are inside. Generally, women don't participate in field production, and at most they just send meals to men who are busy in the field. However, in this link of rice transplanting, we have seen exceptions. Women are widely involved in seedling pulling and transplanting. When the population is decreasing, even if the old, the weak, the women and the children go into battle together, the transplanting can not be completed normally, and direct seeding is the best choice. The rise of live broadcast in recent years may be related to a large number of farmers going out to work and do business, while the rural labor force has decreased. In history, there has also been a phenomenon of changing transplanting to direct seeding. Hubei is the earliest place to use Miao horses. [12] The seedling horse is a tool for pulling out seedlings (or transplanting seedlings), which shows that transplanting seedlings has been used in Hubei in the Northern Song Dynasty. However, as Song Ting moved south, Hubei became the main battlefield of Song and Jin Dynasties, and the population lost a lot. [13] Although there are Jiangnan people, they used to live in a narrow township and came from afar to beg for tenants. [14] However, the trend of population decline in Hubei during the Southern Song Dynasty did not reverse. Live broadcast is the best choice when there are few people and many places. When Peng Guinian (1 142- 1206) was an official in Hubei Province, he recorded that due to the vast land and sparse population and insufficient labor force, he "plowed and cracked, planted but not fattened" and implemented the "diffuse" live broadcast mode. [ 15]

It should be pointed out that this kind of live broadcast of "planting without fattening" and "scattering without scattering" is not only aimed at Hubei farmers who have already taken transplanting, but also at the former Jiangnan farmers who recently moved to Hubei. Narrow rural areas in the south of the Yangtze River used to be a place with very fine farming. However, after the farmers migrated to the new environment of Jinghu North Road with a small population, they did not inherit the original transplanting tradition and adopted direct seeding to adapt to the new situation. From this point of view, the population factor is greater than the farming tradition in the choice of technology. Although it is suspected of "destroying cracks", the direct seeding method is probably the most effective way to use wasteland, because in war-torn areas, there are few people and vast land, so it is unnecessary and difficult to carry out intensive cultivation. In order to increase the output per unit area, we can only plant widely and harvest less, and improve labor productivity through the increase of total output. So people naturally choose the direct seeding method, one of which is "in the old rice ridge, after ploughing, the rice seeds are sown to maturity without pulling up." [16] The lack of agricultural labor force is the main factor in choosing live broadcast. This is more obvious in Lingnan area of Song Dynasty, which is still a wild land with a small population, so agricultural production technology is relatively extensive. Live broadcast is one of its performances.

Population factors also affect the choice of rice planting methods from land development and utilization, that is to say, the choice of direct seeding methods is also related to land development and utilization and natural conditions. After the Tang and Song Dynasties, although the population in some areas decreased due to war and other factors, the whole country still showed a trend of rapid growth. In order to meet the growing population demand, there is a competition for land with mountains and water. In the coastal areas of rivers and lakes, there has been a movement of reclaiming land from water, and various forms of land use have appeared, such as polder fields, sand fields and coated fields, and the marginal areas of rice planting have been expanding outward. These newly reclaimed farmland are very different from the old farmland and need special farming methods and crop varieties. Mainly manifested in the fact that these newly-opened paddy fields are greatly influenced by natural factors, and the water source cannot be effectively controlled and guaranteed. The normal sowing season is often interrupted by rain soaking. After the water recedes, conventional rice seeds are planted according to conventional seedling raising and transplanting procedures, but they cannot bear normal fruits due to the restriction of growth period. Only live broadcast can maximize the effective production time. In some places, such as the fields near the Huaihe River and the South China Sea, it is winter when the water recedes, and the rice planting season has passed; In the summer when rice can be planted, the water level has risen again, and the water depth is no longer cattle. People can only go to the fields by boat or raft. Even if there are ready-made seedlings in this rice field, it is difficult to transplant, so we can only use direct seeding. The method is to row the soaked rice seeds and sprinkle them all over the field in winter and spring when plowing in low water, and at the beginning of Zhixia, when shallow swelling and flooding occur; When the water vein recedes slightly, the seedlings will come out and the early rice can be harvested. That is what Fang Yizhi called "sowing with a fork".

If direct seeding of rice is related to the relatively watery natural environment, direct seeding of upland rice is related to the relative drought and lack of rain in some areas. In some places, "it doesn't rain for a long time in spring, and the mud is baked in the hot sun", and there is no water to raise seedlings. Even the dry seedlings raised in dry land can't be transplanted because Honda lacks water. In addition, in some places, the soil is too sticky to be pulled out. In these cases, live broadcast is the best choice. For example, Tongchuan, Sichuan in the Qing Dynasty, and upland rice planted in Sichuan, Guanyun in northern Jiangsu and the East China Sea during the Republic of China were all the same.

The existence of direct seeding rice, especially direct seeding upland rice, may also be related to the agricultural tradition in the northern dryland. The northern part of China has always been dominated by dryland agriculture, but there are also some sporadic rice cultivation. Due to the influence of dryland agriculture, direct seeding method is widely used in rice planting in northern China. Zhang Kan, the satrap of the Eastern Han Dynasty, once cultivated more than 8,000 hectares of paddy fields here, which is a developed rice planting area in the northern region. However, by the Qing Dynasty, rice had been transplanted here, but dry rice still used the old method of direct seeding. [17] The direct seeding of upland rice between Guanyun and the East China Sea in Jiangsu Province may be related to the natural factors of drought and lack of rain, or it may be related to the influence of dryland agricultural tradition, because it is close to the north of the center of dryland agriculture. In this sense, the so-called live broadcast here is nothing more than using dry land agriculture to grow rice.

On the surface, direct seeding rice seems to be only a passive acceptance under economic, technological and natural conditions, but after understanding the discussion of direct seeding cultivation by agronomists in ancient times (especially after entering the Qing Dynasty, Taihu Lake Basin), we will find that direct seeding is not only a stopgap measure, but also a rational choice. This choice was made after weighing the advantages and disadvantages of transplanting and direct seeding. Because in their view, direct seeding is better than transplanting. This is also an important reason why some areas that originally used rice transplanting in Ming and Qing Dynasties switched to live broadcasting.

China's rice transplanting methods began to be used in the Han Dynasty, popularized in the Tang and Song Dynasties, and basically popularized in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. However, it was in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, that is, the most popular period of rice transplanting methods, that in some areas with the most developed rice cultivation, such as Taihu Lake Basin, various problems brought by rice transplanting became increasingly apparent. In this case, someone put forward the idea of live broadcast. It seems that direct seeding is a "reaction" to transplanting, but this reaction is not a simple retro, but a new direct seeding method that combines the advantages of transplanting under new conditions. If the practice of live broadcast in some areas is the expression of extensive farming, then the proposal of live broadcast in Ming and Qing Dynasties is a rational return. Because the new live broadcast mode is a solution to the problem after the transplant mode has been implemented for many years and various disadvantages have been found.

It should be explained that people were basically positive about rice transplanting technology in Qing Dynasty, and transplanting was the mainstream of rice planting. Ma Yilong, an agronomist in the Ming Dynasty, also theoretically summarized the role of transplanting rice in rice cultivation, pointing out that "transplanting rice in different soils, the gas of the two soils, merged into one seedling, full of vitality." However, after entering the Qing Dynasty, some people began to question the function of transplantation.

It is suspected that the transplanting process may have an adverse effect on the normal growth of seedlings. Lu Shiyi, a thinker in the early Qing Dynasty [18], thought that "today's Tianjia plants are drowned, and the seedlings are pulled out and soaked in water one day, or stay overnight or stay again, even after three or four nights. It's a pity to throw away the stack when drowning. When the sun is red, it will turn yellow and wilt, and wake up in a few days. The vitality of building seedlings has been exhausted. If it is rainy and easy to wake up, rice will win. Getting rid of it early is better than getting rid of it late. It is difficult for seedlings to wake up after a slight summer heat. From this perspective, it is difficult to wake up in the same pot, depending on whether the grain is good or not, but what is the difference between love and environment? " [19] Pan Zengyi [20] expressed his opposition to transplantation in more popular language. He said, "I was just about to have a branch in the rice field when I pulled it up and plugged it in." This strain is not small. When you wake up, turn around. It won't be sent until June. Therefore, every household has a thin head and short ears, Gu Duo. More or less. It's all for this reason. In a grain, there is always a stem that grows first. This stem is called the root of life. It's a pity that you can't plant it, because you pulled out this stalk first. ""pulling out seedlings hurts roots, and the soil is dry and dry. Withered and recovered, and the vitality was hurt. " "You're going to raise seedlings. You have to pull the seedlings out of the water in advance, or one or two nights. If you have them in your hand, you can touch them. It took me three or four nights to plug it in. In the season of drowning, falling and folding, I don't care at all After death, basking in the old sun makes you feel ashamed. Wake up every few days, and the vitality of the seedlings is exhausted. And the mud at the roots must be washed clean, and the roots of the seedlings should be pulled out one by one. So rice is not allowed. It is illegal to plant late. How do you start if you pull up another one? It's a pity that this delay will take another half month. " [2 1]

Transplanting has an adverse effect on seedlings, which may get worse with the increase of labor force. Because transplanting means adding a working procedure, it also increases the amount of labor, and in most cases, this working procedure is added after the previous harvest and before the optimal growth period of crops, and there are other things to take care of, which is short of time, heavy task and high labor intensity. This is reflected in some poems when the paddy field farming technology system in the south of the Yangtze River tends to take shape in the Song Dynasty. "In April, there were few idle people in the countryside, and silkworms went to the fields" [22]. When transplanting rice, men, women and children went into battle together. "Fu Tian threw the rice seedlings to the women, and the children pulled them out and inserted them." Zhen, a poet in the Song Dynasty, mentioned "four pains" in farming, among which "the pain of initial ploughing" and "the pain of establishing seedlings" are all related to transplanting, especially the so-called "the pain of establishing seedlings": "Anger is bound to get angry, agriculture is bound to prosper the country, like dolphins, which will rest at dusk, mud will be covered and a hundred acres of green." If farmers can pay double the labor and get double the return, they will not be stingy with their own labor. But it may actually backfire. Due to the tight time and heavy task, the quality of transplanting rice seedlings can not be guaranteed, which also affects the normal growth of rice seedlings. In the rice-growing area of Taihu Lake in Ming and Qing Dynasties, because transplanting rice seedlings was a labor-intensive process, the cooperative mode of "Tian Jia either changed jobs with each other or asked people to replace him" was often adopted. In this process, some people cut corners and should have planted them at a reasonable density. However, in order to be lazy and save trouble, some people keep the seedlings open and artificially widen the row spacing. It turns out that there are six rows in each row, and each row is eight inches apart. As a result, if each row is out of range or one foot away, it will reduce more than half of the seedlings [23], which will directly affect the yield per unit area. Although some so-called "powerful" families use seedling bombs to regulate the quality of rice transplanting and improve the food standards of ordinary workers, it invisibly increases the cost and labor.

One of the original intentions of rice transplanting is to ensure that crops, such as wheat, have enough growth period in Honda to obtain rice and wheat double seasons. However, due to the tedious work, both the previous crop and the subsequent crop have been affected, and even the benefits of two crops are not as good as one crop. So after long-term practice, some people in Jiangnan area of Qing Dynasty put forward the idea of direct seeding instead of transplanting. Lu Shiyi found that one ear of rice near the field was about feet taller than other ears of rice, and the number of grains on the ear reached more than 200, twice as high as that of other ears of rice. "Because this straw cover has not been transplanted, its vitality has not been released." This discovery gave him a new understanding of the live broadcast method. At that time, Dongxiang, his neighboring village, was implementing a live broadcast method called "staggered valley method". Compared with transplanting method, the harvest of this method has doubled. He believes that "there is a reason for the double harvest in the wrong valley area." Cover the seedlings without planting them. Vitality has not yet been vented. " However, he also believes that there are some shortcomings in the pinching method. One is that it is difficult to cultivate; One is easy to get drunk, but it can't stop the trend. So he put forward a new direct seeding method on the basis of referring to the ancient field method and district field method and combining the farming methods of farmers at that time. Coincidentally, Pan Zengyi also advocated direct seeding of rice fields in the Qing Dynasty. He believes that "pulling out seedlings damages the roots of grass, and the soil dries up." Withered and recovered, the vitality is damaged, so it is appropriate to sow. Sowing seeds is live broadcast. The direct seeding method "does not need transplantation, and the roots are straight down and deep." It is useful to spread branches in April, not only on the main roots, but also in the future. " The head of the first ear of rice naturally looks the same, which is the effect of early rice. "