Farms across the DPRK are actively adopting organic farming.

The Township Farm of Hongwon County, South Hamgyong Province, has introduced the phytophysiology activator extracted from earthworm into agricultural production, gaining considerable profits.

The activator developed by a research team of the intelligent biological products manufactory under Kim Il Sung University through years of painstaking efforts is easily applicable to any units without much effort.

It is effective for seed disinfection, management of seedbeds and nutritional management of crops and prevention of damage by harmful insects.

Last year the farm applied the activator to rice farming, resulting in a remarkable improvement in root growth, increase of the number of stems per phyong and prevention of damage by harmful insects. Consequently, its per-hectare yield grew by 0.5-1.3 tons.

The activator was also effective for growing other cereals such as wheat, barley and maize as well as vegetables.

The Honam Farm under the Pyongyang Municipal Rural Economy Committee has improved its soil fertility by raising green manure crops on a large scale.

The farm has for years planted green manure crop seeds in low-fertility fields before gathering paddy rice and kept them covered with soil all winter after harvesting rice. The following spring they ploughed the rice fields with the grown green manure crops and planted rice seedlings. This procedure proved effective. There were no significant differences in the colour of the soil and the growth of crops between high-fertility fields and the fields where the green manure crops were grown.

Now the farm is continuously expanding the area of green manure crops under cultivation, and it expects that it will have no low-yielding fields within a few years.

The Kangson Farm in Chollima District, Nampho Municipality, has boosted per-hectare grain yield by organically combining crop farming with stockbreeding.

Every year the farm raises hundreds of pigs and thousands of poultry to produce a lot of meat and eggs, which it supplies to kindergartens and nurseries and uses for its economy. Tens of tons of high-quality organic fertilizer produced from growing animals are applied to every hectare.

Meanwhile, many farms in other parts of the country introduce the farming method using snails, which has already proved effective in practice, in conformity with the actual conditions of the relevant regions and units.

In particular, cities, counties and farms in South Hamgyong Province have built snail farming grounds. This year they have secured the snails enough to be released in the paddy field that is three times wider than that of last year, and they have released over 10 000 snails per hectare as soon as the rice seedlings stroke their roots.

Jong Hwa Sun