How to grow rice for a better harvest

(This is the translation of a letter sent by my uncle, Fr. Christian Soudée SJ, a Jesuit priest who has lived in Madagascar for decades, about the work of one of his confrères.) Fr. Henri de Laulanié SJ, an agronomist who has worked in Madagascar for many years , realized one day that rice that had been accidentally transplanted a month earlier than normal gave a much better yield than the rice transplanted after two months, as is the custom. This inspired him to study more closely the timing of rice transplanting. Normally, farmers sow the rice in a small space, and densely, so that the rice grains touch each other. When the seedlings develop, they grow vertically, with very thin stems. Each plant has only one stem, because there is no room between plants so they cannot branch out. Similarly, the roots dig down vertically to search for sustenance instead of branching out in bunches. At transplanting time, two or three months later, people take a handful of plants and tear them out roughly. The plants are damaged, and the bottom part of the roots with all the radicles (secondary roots) are left behind . After transplanting, the plants turn yellow, which shows they are withering for lack of nourishment. They have to reconstitute their root system, which can take three weeks or more, after which growth can begin again. Since each plant only has one stem, people plant them very close together, to fill the rice paddy. Traditionally, the women who do the transplanting put 3, 4, 5, or 6 seedlings together! Which means they need a lot of seedlings. The New Technique Fr. de Laulanié started to experiment, transplanting the rice after one month, 15 days, 10 days, and even 8 days, sowing the grain much more sparsely, and sowing in mud instead of water. These experiments took several years, and yields were compared. He also changed the way seedlings well pulled up, so that roots would not be damaged. He concluded that the earlier the transplanting, the better the yield. The best time was 8 to 13 days after sowing. This meant the tiny plants must be picked up carefully with a shovel, taking some of the dirt with them. Thus the roots are not damaged, and the seedling continues to grow without a break. This shortens the growing season by three weeks or more. Since the seedlings are started far apart in the nursery plot, they are easy to transplant one at a time. They are also planted at a certain distance from one another. This allows the plant to branch out, meaning that new stems grow at the base of each leaf, and a single plant can give 10, 20, 30 or even 50 stems, and that many ears. Meanwhile, the roots grow in thick clusters close to the surface, where they get more nitrogen and oxygen than they would deeper down. And because growth has been continuous, the ears are much fuller. Yields are multiplied by 10, 20 and even more. The main problem with this method is that water must be carefully controlled at transplanting time, so as not to drown the tiny seedling. It must be transplanted in mud, and water must be allowed in gradually as the plant grows. Great Hope for Madagascar The high plateaux between Tananarive and Fianarantsoa is arguably overpopulated and many young people cannot stay to work on the family farm. They are forced to migrate and either move to the city, where work is hard to find, or migrate to the less densely populated western regions. Using Fr. Laulanié's rice-growing method should help feed more people on the high plateaux and allow more of the young people to stay on their ancestral lands.