In recent years, the Unjong Farm in Anak County, South Hwanghae Province, has raised per-hectare yields of paddy rice by introducing advanced farming methods.

One of them is mud snail-based organic farming.

Several years ago, Ri Chol Ryong started to work as the manager of the farm. While looking round farm fields for a dozen days and having talks with farmers, he came to identify an important fact that they had made efforts to root out weeds adversely affecting rice farming, but in vain.

He thought about how to find out the solution and began to study the experiences of other farms.

In the course of this, he was interested in the method of mud snail-based organic farming.

Actually, the method had many advantages.

So, he visited a farm in Yomju County in North Phyongan Province in the vanguard of its introduction.

He went round its fertile fields with no weeds and listened to the opinions of its officials and farmers.

After returning to his farm, he organized an inspection for technical consultants of workteams to the farms in Yomju County.

Their feedback on the inspection was great.

As seeing is believing, they witnessed the reality with their own eyes. After listening to their explanation, farmers turned out as one to introduce the mud snail-based organic farming.

The farm ensured that its farmers had a deeper understanding of technical requirements arising in its introduction, and conducted the work to generalize successes and experiences of workteams in various forms and by various methods.

Amid brisk competition by workteams and sub-workteams and vigorous campaign of swapping experiences, a knotty problem arising in the wintering of breeding mud snails was solved.

Based on it, the farm could systematically expand the fields of introducing mud snail-based organic farming and finally apply it into all paddy fields.

As a result, it produced 500 to 700 kilograms of more rice per hectare and improved the fertility of soil.

With this as a momentum, the zeal to find out even one more method for increased grain production was heightened among its officials and farmers, while making efforts to introduce the experiences of leading units into the reality of the farm and learn advanced agricultural science and technology through the system of distance question and answer service for agro-technology.

Ri Chol Ryong said: The painstaking efforts of farmers proved effective. Their zeal to increase per-hectare yields by applying scientific farming methods and technologies have soared higher. The key to boost crop yields lies in scientific farming.

The farm is now concentrating all its efforts to the farming preparations for increased grain production this year, true to the decisions made at the Seventh Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

Jo Kang Byol