Yang Kil Kim, Jung Joon Lee, and Jung Gon Kim. National Institute of Crop Science, Honam Agricultural Research Institute, #381 Songhak-Dong, Iksan, South Korea
The productivity of upland crops such as barley, wheat, and other cereals, in Korea has been lowered steadily during the past decades, resulting in the decreased area to plant to those crops and the weaken price competitiveness as well. Major reasons for this are the shortage of labor forces, high labor cost, and smaller area per farmer in rural area. Therefore, both to increase the productivity and to strengthen the price competitiveness, there are needs to improve cultivation practices including labor saving and machine use in seeding or harvesting. In Korea, more than eighty percent of barley is planted to the paddy fields after harvesting the rice. Therefore, in conventional cropping system of Korea there is always competitiveness between barley seeding and the rice harvesting in terms of labor force and machine. Moreover, frequent rainfall and lower temperature in the season make barley seeding to be delayed. In addition, most farmers used to burn rice straw or eliminate from the fields, resulting in both the air pollution and the waste of soil organic matters that eventually causes soil to become weak and unproductive. To solve the above-mentioned problems, we developed a new barley seeding system by using seeder attached to a rice harvest combine, which both plant barley and harvest rice at the same time, contributing for time- and labor-saving, and soil conservation. Yield trials were conducted at the farming scale by using the new cultivation system during 2001 to 2002. The results showed 5~8% higher in grain yield, or 16% higher in net income than those of the conventional seeding methods. Also, it reduced the labor force by 57%, and operating cost by 8%.
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