economy

Amid the nationwide efforts being directed to changing the grain production structure into rice and wheat farming, the early crop production plan was overfulfilled and a marked increase was achieved by many regions and units in grain production in the double cropping of wheat and dry-field rice which had been believed to be impossible.

Pakchon County reaped a surprisingly bountiful harvest by cultivating dry-field rice on hundreds of hectares of plots as the later crop after wheat this year.

In the past the county had regarded it as fine to produce five tons of grain per hectare by farming throughout the year. But this year it harvested wheat more than that and dry-field rice as the second crop as much as wheat.

As a result, it increased the total rice output by well over a thousand tons over the previous years.

Jongju City cultivated dry-field rice as the later crop after wheat to increase the rice output, thereby saving much fertilizer with less labour than it needed for maize farming.

In the past the agricultural workers of the city used to do maize farming as the second crop after wheat, and it is said to have required much labour but produced poor yield.

So they did dry-field rice farming as the second crop after wheat this year to gather in a rich harvest.

Mundok and Sonchon counties also made an innovation in dry-field rice farming as the aftercrop.

They paid close attention to fixing the sowing period to meet the weather and climatic conditions of their regions and biological characteristics of dry-field rice and employing rational methods that could increase crop yields. They took sci-tech measures to produce high yields and steadily pushed ahead with the work to disseminate and spread the advanced farming techniques. They widely introduced growth regulator and nutrition enricher including phytosine to maximize the ripening rate of grain and 1 000-grain weight, resulting in a success in the aftercrop dry-field rice farming.

Dry-field rice farming was widely encouraged not only in the plain areas but also in the intermediary and mountainous areas.

Songwon County, for example, is located at a high altitude and therefore has unfavourable weather and climatic conditions for paddy rice farming.

The county found the solution to increased rice production in cultivating dry-field rice as the second crop after wheat in a large area. It expanded the cultivation area and did farming by employing scientific cultivation methods such as that of growing dry-field rice seedlings with seeds of good varieties and transplanting them to produce a high yield. The farmers in the county are full of confidence, saying that gone are the days when they were envious of the plain areas as they had no paddy fields and that dry-field rice farming is of enormous benefit to them.

Agricultural officials and workers are now redoubling their efforts to achieve greater success in the double cropping of wheat and dry-field rice next year, too.