Rice Planting in US (With History)--and in Taiwan/Japan

choi

(1) South Carolina Rice Plantations, in Joseph A Opala, The Gullah; Rice, slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American connection. USIS, 1987 (a pamphlet of 36 pages).
http://www.yale.edu/glc/gullah/02.htm

Note:
(a) South Carolina Lowcountry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Carolina_Lowcountry
(b)
(i) Charleston, South Carolina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston,_South_Carolina
(Founded in 1670 as Charles Towne in honor of King Charles II of England, Charleston adopted its present name in 1783)
(ii) Charles II of England
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_England
(1630-1685; reign 1660-1685; his father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall in 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War)
(c) Sierra-Leon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Leone
(independence from UK in 1961)

Quote: "In 1462, the area that is now Sierra Leone was visited by the Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra, who named it Serra Leoa, meaning "Lioness Mountains. Sierra Leone later became an important centre of the transatlantic trade in slaves until 11 March 1792 when Freetown [the present-day capital] was founded by the Sierra Leone Company as a home for former slaves enslaved from (or freed by) the British Empire.
(d) rice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice
(Oryza sativa (Asian rice) or Oryza glaberrima (African rice); section 6.2 Africa; section 6.4 Europe: The Moors brought Asiatic rice to the Iberian Peninsula in the 10th century; section 6.6 United States: The predominant strain of rice in the Carolinas was from Africa)

Unlike the Mississippi Delta region, California's production is dominated by short- and medium-grain japonica varieties

choi

(2) rice cultivation in Arkansas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_cultivation_in_Arkansas
(opening statement; section 1 History; "Arkansas rice is typically grown in drilled rows, which are flooded at the four to six leaf stage (usually four to five weeks after planting), under a dry seeded culture")


(3) USA Rice Federation, undated.
(a) A Brief History of US-Grown Rice.
http://www.menurice.com/all-about-rice/rice-varieties/history
(b) How Rice Is Grown.
http://www.menurice.com/all-about-rice/how-rice-is-grown
("In alphabetical order, they [rice-producing states] are Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas. * * * All of these states primarily grow long-grain rice, except California which produces primarily medium-grain rice. The latter is prized by consumers in Northeast Asia for its exceptional cooking and eating quality")
(c) Cultivating and Farming US Rice. 
http://www.menurice.com/all-abou ... ing-and-cultivation
("US rice growers put soils that would be unsuitable for most agriculture to good use. Heavy clay soils that are ill suited to most crops retain water very well, making them perfect for rice")

choi

(4) Rice Production Handbook. Corporate Extension Service, Division of Agriculture, University of Arkansas, June 2, 2011 (MP192).
http://www.uaex.edu/Other_Areas/publications/PDF/MP192/MP192.pdf

Quote:

"The predominate seeding method is direct dry seeded [referring to the first two in the following methods]. About 70 percent of the rice is drill seeded, 28 percent is broadcast seeded and only about 2 percent is water seeded. * * * The current record [for teh entire state, not individual counties, which was even higher] of 136.6 bushels per acre (45 pounds rough rice per bushel) was set in 1996."  page 1

"drill row spacings of 6 to 8 inches are ideal."  page 22

"In Arkansas, the most common method of seeding rice is direct, dry seeding using either a drill, airplane or airflow truck. Broadcast seeding is most commonly used on clay soils or in wet years when speed of planting is important. Dry, broadcast seeded rice is covered either by a final tillage operation or by flushing after levees are pulled. Dry seeding is practiced on about 97 percent of the Arkansas rice acreage. The remaining 3 percent is direct, water-seeded for stand establishment or red rice suppression."  page 25

"Water-seeding rice is a common production method in southern Louisiana and areas in Texas and California. * * * The primary reason for water-seeding is for red rice suppression."  page 29

choi

(5)
(a) seed drill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_drill
(Jethro Tull is widely thought of as having invented the seed drill)

* Jethro Tull (agriculturist)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jethro_Tull_(agriculturist)
(1674-1741; English)
(b) sowing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sowing
(section 2.1 Hand sowing: or broadcasting)

(6) Though the following deals with WHEAT planting, but methodology discussed are the same as that for rice planting.

James Herbek and Lloyd Murdock, Planting Methods. Kentucky Small Grain Growers' Association, undated http://www.kysmallgrains.org/productionmanual/plantingmethods.htm
(drilling, broadcasting, aerial seeding and no-tillage planting)

choi

(7) Rice planting in Taiwan.
(a) Chris Banducci, Taiwanese Traditions: The Planting and Growing of Rice. The Taiwan Adventure Blog, Apr 4, 2011.
http://thetaiwanadventure.blogsp ... s-planting-and.html
("These days rice is planted in a more automated way. Small Kubota tractors are equipped with special seedling planting equipment")

* Mr Banducci is a pastor/missionary in Taoyuan, Taiwan, according to the home page of the blog.
* Kubota Corp 株式会社クボタ, based in Osaka, was founded in 1890 by gonshirō KUBOTA 久保田 権四郎. 

(b) Hiroshi Fujiki, The Structure of Rice Production in Japan and Taiwan. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 47: 387-400 (1999).
http://www.kier.kyoto-u.ac.jp/DP/DP475.pdf
(Nonetheless, the average tractor in Taiwan works more than ten times as large an area as does the average tractor in Japan. * * * By 1990, 98 percent of rice production was accomplished by machinery in Taiwan. Moreover, as can be seen in Table 3, in 1990, Taiwanese rice production required farmers to spend 238 hours in 1 ha of paddy field on average, while Japanese farmers in the Non-Hokkaido region spent 456 hours in 1
ha of paddy on average, and throughout the process of economic development,
Taiwanese farmers have worked shorter hours than Japanese farmers.５
In short, Taiwanese farms utilize a relatively small number of machines more efficiently than Japanese farms in the Non-Hokkaido region, given an almost identical farm size distribution [in every category of 1-0.5, 0.5-1, 1-2, 2-3, 3-5, 5+ ha]")
* Hiroshi FUJIKI 藤木 裕 is with Bank of Japan.
* The journal is published by The University of Chicago Press.
* ha stands for hectare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hectare
(10,000 square metres (100 m by 100 m); about 2.471 acres)
* "Table 2 THE ARE IN RICE HARVEST PER MACHINE

Machine type................Non-Hokaido (1990)....Taiwan (1990)
Tractor and power tillers...0.53 ha ..............4.67 ha
Power rice planter.........1.04 ha ..............11.30 ha
Combine....................1.62 ha ..............28.18 ha


(c) Planting rice in Taiwan is planing seedlings (not seeds, as in US). Japanese are the same. Here is a video of the latter:

lelepasticcio, Rice Planting In Japan 田植え. YouTube.cm, published on Jan 19, 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjOb8T8Eq3o
("May 22nd 2012 Rice Planting In Japan")

(d) Katia Moskvitch, Black Eggs and Ripe Guava Lead Taiwan's Tech Revolution. BBC, Mar 28, 2013.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21929307

My comment:
(i) guava (Psidium guajava; in Taiwan: 芭樂 or 番石榴)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psidium_guajava
(native to Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America)
(ii)
(A) Mr Zai-Lang JIANG/ Mrs Xiao-Wen YANG (farmer couple)  江再郎先生/楊曉雲女士
(B) Dr Chen-Long CHUANG  莊 欽龍 博士
(iii) The report carried a photo of many Taiwanese farmers planting seedlings (whose caption read, "Many Taiwanese rice farmers still use traditional farming techniques"--credit: Getty Image), though the text talks nothing about rice planting.

The reporter was mistaken. Those farmers participated in a successful effort to break world's record. See

Simon Parker, Rice farmers in Taiwan smash Guinness World Record. ITN, Published on Aug 18, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHVTuyUwK4E
("1,215 farmers in Taiwan set a new world record for transplanting rice seedlings on a plot of land")  
(iv) "Prof Ching-Wei CHENG from the National Chung Hsing University"
鄭 經偉 教授/ 國立中興大學 (at 台中市)
(A) 農業與自然資源學院 生物產業機電工程學系 鄭經偉       
http://bimewww.nchu.edu.tw/teacher/Pro_now_10.htm
(博士 美國州立辛辛那提大學航空 / 力學工程所)
(B) 蔡永彬, 好蛋？壞蛋？機器幫你看－－「行政院96年傑出科技貢獻獎」得獎人鄭經偉教授專訪. 科學發展月刊, January 2009.
http://web1.nsc.gov.tw/ct.aspx?xItem=10278&ctNode=439#
("臺灣人愛吃皮蛋，全臺灣每天生產皮蛋可達 150 萬顆。 * * * 目前皮蛋的主要生產方法是「浸漬法」，準備一缸缸的強鹼把鴨蛋放入，使蛋白凝固、蛋黃變成綠色，就完成初步處理。在浸漬的過程中，「蛋殼沒有裂痕」是確保優質皮蛋的重要因素。若有破損的蛋混入缸中，鹼液滲透進去和蛋汁混合很容易讓浸泡液變質，甚至導致整缸蛋損壞")