/ The Economy - Agriculture
Organic Farming Methods Encouraged
  A number of agricultural units are making redoubled efforts to attain the grain production goal for this year by studying and introducing advanced farming techniques and methods in order to carry out the tasks presented at the Tenth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea.





 

  The Advanced Agricultural Technology Exchange Centre under the Academy of Agricultural Science is intensifying the research into the sci-tech problems arising in introducing and generalizing the organic farming methods including fish culture in rice field according to the characteristics of the regions concerned.
  Researchers of the centre select right places for fish culture in rice field and make manuals for their introduction to generalize them throughout the country.





  They also visit several units introducing the organic farming methods to confirm their effectiveness and put them on a highly scientific footing.
  The Kingol Farm in Rangnang District of Pyongyang is directing efforts to the cultivation of paddy rice by mud snails this year, too, on the basis of its past experience.
  Deputy Manager Kim Kwang Il says:
  "Mud snails eat grass 1.5 times as much as their weights a day, which increases the weeding effect. In autumn we collect only breed mud snails and release the rest of them on the fields, which serve as the organic manure, making an active contribution to raising the fertility of soil
  After all, we could halve the amount of fertilizer applied as against before and increase the unit-area yield more than 10 percent.
  On the basis of this experience, we have introduced the method on a full scale this year, too."







  The active encouragement of the organic farming methods at several farms made it possible to save manpower and farming materials for weeding to the maximum as against before. And a prospect opened to raise the fertility of soil while protecting it and increase the agricultural production in a stable way.