Q&A: From 50-Ton IMO Piles to Strong Calcium on Potatoes

0:00 Thank you all the presenters. Thank you for bearing throughout the ten presentations. Now we are going to have questions, discussion session. So if you raise up your hands, our staff will bring the mic to you. I'm sorry, but now it's 2 o'clock. For the sake of our time, we are going to have our discussion within 10 minutes only. So if you raise up your hand, we're going to bring the mic to you.

1:00 Okay, I will address my query to Mr. Christopher Trump and Joe McGinn. The first one is that in his presentation, he said that he uses 150 pounds of IMO every year for his farm. I want to know whether he makes it every year and if it is easy for him to build this or whether he uses some higher level. And my second intervention, I want to know from Mr. Joe, natural farming input application in swamps in Hawaii. I understood that Hawaii has many swamps and I want to know whether there is any difference

1:49 in the effects of applying natural farming both on dry land and in swamps, and if there's a difference, what strategies does he take to ensure the efficiency in swamps as well as in dry lands. And Mr. Juju Wang from Japan, what strategies are used by the natural farming movement to preserve wildlife? Thank you. Thank you for your question.

2:34 I do not make, I have made about 70, 75 tons over the last three years, but I don't make that every year. And I use machines, so it's all tractors and mechanical implements, so there's a compost turner. So I make the row with the materials, I use a machine to spray out my nutrient solution, and then I turn it with a compost turner that turns the inside out and the outside in, all for me. So for a 100,000-pound or 50-ton pile, it only takes me five minutes to turn it,

3:28 the whole thing, completely, and aerate it. And I no longer make that quantity of IMO per year. Now I make small 100-pound batches focusing on the quality of IMO3, and I use that as my inoculum to make liquid IMO. And then I spray liquid IMO on the trees, and I grow it out using aeration in a tank. For the past five years now of doing natural farming in Hawaii, we have noticed our weather and environment has not been the same.

4:20 Our wet season has become the dry season and vice versa. Our summers have become wet so our weather patterns have not been stable at all. Applying the natural farming inputs, the foliar feeds, have really allowed the plants to be somewhat stable and still be able to grow despite the fluctuations in either flooding or in a drought situation. For myself personally, we grow in a dry garden, dry farm type of area. Speaking specifically to a flooded situation where the kalo, or taro, is grown in water, perhaps maybe Steven can share about his experience and what it's like

5:06 to grow in a flooded system. Thank you. We usually dry it first and then we inoculate with IMO4. Let that sit for a couple of weeks and then we'll plant, and then we will just implement with the inputs. And then maybe twice a month we will do a liquid IMO also. We will spray. Thank you. Hello, everyone.

5:51 Here we have a question for Ahmad. The question for Ahmad is about the tomato experiment. In your experiment, you showed the data, very good data for the natural farming. But I have a question about this. In your design, how do you define the T1, T2 and T3? For example, if T1 is the natural science farming system, what is that exactly? And what is the conventional farming system? What exactly is that? Because to me, to my understanding, the conventional one, the characteristic of the conventional agriculture is the chemical and the herbicide.

6:47 Okay. So how do you define the conventional farming system that you use in your experiment? Thank you very much. Regarding T1, T2, or T3, these are the treatments which I use in my experiment. We can see simply I use three different systems. The one is natural science farming. For this, we didn't apply any chemical, just natural. And T2 means treatment two, or system two, which is organic system. We didn't apply natural fertilizer, just we applied organic fertilizer for that treatment, that system.

7:40 And T3 means conventional, which means conventional is the using of the chemical fertilizer like NPK and some others. This is the definition of the different systems in my experiment. Thank you. My question was for the last presenter. I was curious how you made liquid IMO.

8:32 The solid IMO was, one kilogram of solid IMO was suspended, was put in a, in a bag and suspended in one thousand liters of water. Yes, that's it. And during application it was diluted 500 times. My question is for

9:18 Eun-ha Lee. There was a beautiful picture of the natural fermented feed. Is he in the room? Oh, he left. He left, OK. We'll go to his house tomorrow, so you can talk. Maybe one or two more questions from the floor. One or two more questions from the floor. Japanese speaker.

10:08 In your presentation, you said you use phosphoric acid to produce the tomato. Is that allowed, the... phosphoric acid, the... Is that allowed for the natural farming system? And the other question is that also in your presentation, when you show the disease, that you use different agents to cure the disease. Is that kind of agent, is that allowed for natural farming or any of the...

11:06 Okay, my question is that the phosphoric acid, that is, what is this phosphoric acid? Phosphoric acid? Yeah. Phosphoric acid. What is it? Insan? (Korean for phosphoric acid) Phosphoric... insan? Oh, insan. Is that allowed for natural farming? He's asking whether that's all right in natural farming, the phosphoric acid. Whether you can give phosphoric acid in natural farming. What kind of phosphoric acid did you give? Did you apply phosphoric acid?

인산? 그게 자연농으로 해서 괜찮냐고, 인산. 자연농으로 해서 인산을 줘도 되느냐. 어떤 인산을 준 거예요? 인산을 쳤어요?

11:52 The phosphoric acid, from rice bran. Phosphorus from rice bran. He got the phosphorus from rice bran. The other question: this is chemical, used to cure disease?

인산은 쌀겨로.

12:51 It's not chemical. It's from the plant. It's in the bag, but it's not chemical. For organic farming, it's not allowed. So he used all organic, no chemical. Now, just one more, the last question. My question is for Baryalai. Effect of Calcium on Potato Production in Natural Farming. It is my understanding that the dilution for water soluble calcium is 1 to 1000.

13:39 However, in looking at the applications of water soluble calcium treatments and seeing the highest potato tuber production as well as dry weight foliage, For your T9 and T10, it says the dilution is between 1 to 113 and 1 to 169, which is a much stronger application than we understand. If you could speak a little bit about increasing the application of more calcium and your observations, And could you also talk about how you applied the water soluble calcium to the soil?

14:28 What volume of water and how was that applied? Okay, thank you. That's a good question. My research was based on, I wanted to find something new. Because usually in nature, everyone follows the same thing. Usually everybody is following the same thing. As I studied the effect of calcium on potato in conventional, I found that the volume we are using, for example, calcium 1 to 1000 dilution, it is not enough for potato production.

15:19 Then I decided to compare this dilution. For example, I used 50 ppm. I analyzed this water-soluble calcium. I formulated for 50 ppm, 100 ppm and 150 ppm in the soil. It is equal to that, as you can see in front of you. And also I use 30 ppm, 60 ppm and 90 ppm on the leaves. Then I use the same amount in the leaves and soil. As you can see in the high concentration of calcium in the soil increase the potato production.

16:07 In control you can see it is 25 metric tons, but in high concentration of calcium in the soil, it is up to 40.7 metric tons. See the differences between production. Another thing, when we are using calcium on the leaves, the potato transportation system is not able to bring it down to the potato tuber for potato tuber cell division and increasing. This was my idea to use the calcium in the soil. We can use it easily, even in conventional farming. Also the researchers recommended we have to use water-soluble calcium,

16:59 chemical. We can use water soluble chemical calcium in the soil. Then we can increase the potato production. So he gave calcium to the soil and to the leaves, and giving it at high concentration to both soil and leaves got the best result. And with calcium, when it's given on the leaves, it travels down only slowly, so giving calcium straight to the soil, rather than on the leaves, did more for the potato harvest. And another thing about the volume: I use the calcium three times, according to the plant growth, plant size. And first application I use 250 ml water-soluble calcium in the soil,

그래서 칼슘을 토양과 잎에 줬는데, 토양과 잎에 높은 농도로 준 게 가장 좋은 효과를 얻었습니다. 그리고 칼슘 같은 경우는 잎에 줬을 때 전파가 느리게 내려가기 때문에, 그래서 잎에 준 것보다는 토양에 직접 칼슘을 준 것이 감자 수확에 더 좋은 효과를 줬습니다.

17:51 and second time, same amount, 250, and third time I increased to 300 ml in the soil, around the plant. Thank you very much. We're going to wrap up the question session. Now we are going to give some announcements.

18:37 I would like to give you several announcements. For those of you who didn't know, the snacks and water and beverages are prepared outside the back door. And we also have parking tickets. So after this symposium, when you leave, you can request it to the registration desk. And we're going to distribute meal coupons before the group photo. And we prepared meal coupons only for those who pre-registered. So those who registered today, unfortunately, we cannot give you because we had to make a special reservation. We had to make a reservation for special menus.

19:19 But you can still buy meal coupons at the cafeteria. And I will call out the list of the names for those of you who can get the meal coupons right after this. And we'll be handing out meal tickets. We'll hand them out before the group photo, before everyone takes the picture. Meal tickets are only for those who registered in advance. If you registered today, we're sorry, but we can't give you one. Because we had to book a special menu ahead of time,

그리고 식권을 저희가 나눠드릴 건데요. 그룹 포토, 다들 사진 찍기 전에 식권을 나눠드릴 겁니다. 그리고 식권은 미리 등록하신 분들에 한해서만 드릴 수 있고요. 오늘 등록하신 분들은 죄송하지만 드릴 수가 없습니다. 저희가 특별 메뉴를 미리 예약해야 되기 때문에

20:07 we can only give out as many as we reserved. So I'll read out the list of people who get meal tickets. So I will call out the names for those of you who can get the meal coupons. So, 10 guests from Hawaii. Hawaii, so we'll give it to Chris. Chris? And to Mr. Hino's (?) team of three. And the eight guests from Taiwan: We'll give it to Jianxin Song. Who is Jianxin Song?

저희가 미리 예약한 만큼만 드릴 수 있다는 점 알려드리고요. 그래서 식권 드릴 수 있는 분 명단을 알려드리도록 하겠습니다. 그리고 히노(?) 선생님 세 분 팀한테 드리겠습니다. 그리고 타이완의 8명의 게스트.

20:52 And Mr. Juju Wang. That's the last one, one left out of the nine. And Sri Lanka. World Vision Sri Lanka? To nine Korean guests, read out by name. And the KOICA–Konkuk students, the six presenters.

하나 남은 거, 아홉 개 중에 하나 남은 거예요. 조경우 선생님, 이은아 선생님, 장김준 선생님, 장식은 선생님, 김성균 선생님, 김웅 선생님, 서수영 선생님, 이화균 선생님, 김성규 부선생님께 드리겠습니다. 그리고 코이카 KU 학생들, 6명의 프레젠터입니다.

21:40 Thank you.

감사합니다.