Konkuk University, Seoul · October 5–7, 2016
A day of talks in Seoul, then two days on the farms. 23 talks, three languages. Master Cho's students from ten countries showed what natural farming did on their fields, from Afghan potatoes to Hawaiian macadamias. Every talk is translated, checked line by line, and boiled down to what was tested and what happened.
Also on the record: Hilo 2015
19 talks on “microbes”
Chris Trump, who farms 800 acres of macadamia nuts in Hawaiʻi with his family, reports six years of feeding the whole orchard with natural farming only. He says the full program, labor included, costs $21 per acre per year, and that 98% of diseased trees recovered. He also explains why he moved from huge solid Microbes (IMO4) piles to a sprayed liquid Microbes (liquid IMO) program after a storm hit a 50-ton pile.
Joe McGinn tells how a natural farming support network grew on Oʻahu in the five years after he trained with Dr. Hoon Park and Master Cho in 2011: shared classes, hands-on input making, a 2013 Hawaiʻi symposium, and whole families on the farm. His own farm keeps about 100 pigs, two dozen chickens and six goats on no bought feed, using brewery spent grain treated with natural farming inputs. He also names the hard parts: few trainees keep farming, there is not yet enough product for market, and classes don't pay for themselves.
Found About 100 pigs, two dozen chickens and half a dozen goats on no bought feed
A Korean missionary tells how he learned natural farming from Master Cho, failed for two or three years in the Philippines, and was called crazy for culturing feed for chickens and pigs with soil microbes. He shows two feed systems: green feed his team can now make the same way all year, and a layered, fermented corn feed with lactic acid bacteria and Microbes (IMO). He gave no numbers. A trial of feed ratios for hens and eggs was still running, with data being prepared.
Found The natural farming method did better than the local method in his side-by-side test
A one-season tomato trial (cv. Sunglove) in Paju compared Natural Science Farming, organic and conventional plots. The natural plots started slower but ended with taller plants, more leaves, longer roots, first harvest about a week earlier and the highest marketable yield: 3.80 kg per plant against 3.42 organic and 3.12 conventional. They also scored lower for blossom end rot and insect damage and higher for taste and appearance.
Found Highest marketable yield: 3.80 kg/plant vs 3.42 organic and 3.12 conventional
The companion to the speaker's tomato trial: eggplant (cv. Black Horse) in Paju under Natural Science Farming, organic and conventional systems, same design. The natural plots gave the most marketable fruit, 4.08 kg per plant against 3.56 organic and 3.1 conventional, had far fewer insects, and their fruit took longer to spoil and scored higher for taste and Brix. One season, small plots.
Found Most marketable fruit: 4.08 kg/plant vs 3.56 organic and 3.1 conventional
A potato trial at Paju, March to July 2016, grown with natural farming solutions throughout, tested ten ways of giving Reproduction (water-soluble calcium, WCA): on the soil, on the leaves, or both, at three strengths. The strongest soil dose gave the top yield, 40.7 t/ha against 25.03 for no calcium, and the heaviest tubers. Calcium on the leaves alone did little for yield; soil and leaf together built the most foliage.
Found Strongest soil dose (T4) gave the top yield: 40.7 t/ha vs 25.03 with no calcium
A one-season peanut trial at Konkuk's Paju test farm compared solid Microbes (IMO4), liquid Microbes (IMO4 in water), commercial EM and a water-only control. Both IMO treatments gave more pods, heavier seed, far more root nodules and higher soil microbe counts. Solid IMO4 gave the top yield, 2,816 kg/ha, against 1,904.6 for EM and 1,674.8 for the control.
A short Q&A after the ten morning talks. Chris Trump explained how he moved from 50-ton piles of Microbes (IMO) to small IMO3 batches brewed into liquid IMO; a Hawaiʻi taro grower described IMO4 in flooded fields; the Konkuk students explained their trial designs, how liquid IMO was made for the peanut trial, where the tomato trial's phosphorus came from, and why the potato trial used water-soluble calcium six to nine times stronger than the usual 1:1000. Several questions went unanswered for lack of time or because the presenter had left.
Found Chris Trump has made about 70–75 tons of IMO over three years, not every year
A one-season paddy rice trial at Paju gave Fuel (FAA) at three strengths, 1:2000, 1:1000 and 1:500, on top of a full natural farming spray program, against a no-FAA control. The 1:500 plots had the most tillers, the longest roots, nearly three times the control's root volume and the most panicles per hill (23.6 vs 18.4). Filled grains per panicle and 1,000-grain weight did not differ, and no grain yield per area was reported.
Found Root volume at flowering 180 cc with FAA 1:500 vs 65 cc in the control
Master Cho, 82, speaks without slides near the end of the first day. Despite the uploader's title, this is not a history lecture. His point is that natural farming is a movement of love, not a technique, and he makes it with stories: turning Kona lava into 3 cm of soil in six months with corn and microbes, Hawaiʻi's vanished egg farms, a 1,200-hectare project in China, and a spring made with bananas in Africa. He also corrects the students on Microbes (IMO4): mix in soil from the field the IMO4 will go to.
Chang-pyo Lee of World Vision Korea reports on 'Neorganic' farming (natural farming plus no-till, mulch and compost) in World Vision projects in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia. In Vietnam, rice yielded the same as conventional at lower input cost, and a higher selling price gave two to three times the net profit; chicken and herbs also earned more, while lettuce, broccoli and pigs fed no protein earned less. Ethiopian seed potatoes yielded more at all three cooperatives, and Sri Lankan families gained food access and diet diversity, though their yields were not significantly different from non-participants.
Found Vietnam rice: same yield, 11,000 vs 6,500 VND/kg, 2.3–3.3 times the net profit
A World Vision Sri Lanka staff member reports on a 2013–2015 project, funded by World Vision Korea and KOICA, that brought natural farming (which she calls 'neo-organic') to 600 farm families in Vaharai, a war-affected coastal division. After a year of training only a handful of farmers had taken it up; small groups, close follow-up and training the government agriculture instructors turned it around. The final evaluation shows wide use of homemade fertilizers and pesticides, more home gardens and water access, and weekly chemical-free vegetable markets, but no yields, costs or incomes.
Found After one year of training, only a few farmers had adopted; both transcripts heard 'only two'
A farmer who runs a natural farming test farm in Paju fed Korean native corn by growth stage. She made her own Microbes-based fertilizers ("IMO5") for nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium and gave them at the times Master Cho teaches. Her seed came from a variety that, she was told, sets one ear per stalk, two at most. Her video shows a plant counted to ten ears, and she says most of the ten filled. This is a first-season farm report with no control, no yields and no dilutions.
A Konkuk plant pathologist, new to natural farming, reviews biological control of soil-borne disease and shows his own work: bacteria coated on rice seed against seedling rot, and bacteria against Phytophthora root rot of pepper, both working better when given a sugar the bacteria can use and the pathogen cannot. He then gives first, unreplicated microbe counts from the Paju natural farming soils and from each IMO step: counts fell about tenfold from IMO1 to IMO4 and the fungi shifted from Aspergillus to Rhizopus. He draws no conclusion about natural farming yet.
The group's first stop in Gokseong was the county's own natural farming center. Staff showed a mineral-water system: water is pumped up and dropped onto five kinds of stone in a tank, which the guide says adds minerals and oxygen, and a small bag of Microbes (IMO4) adds microbes too. Outside, the county's return-to-farm support center and the start date of its natural farming teaching, 2009, were explained.
A large quail egg farm in Gokseong was building, with the county, a model farm for pigs, hens and cows beside its quail houses. Dr. Hoon Park interpreted as the hosts and Master Cho explained the deep sawdust floor (soil, salt, sea water), a ventilation roof from Cho's research center, and a feed plan built on the farm's own waste: about 8 tons of quail manure a day. The visit ended at the owner's seven-year-old ginseng, grown under shade with Microbes (IMO).
Found Natural ventilation keeps the pens from getting too hot
On the evening of October 6, 2016, the group visited a small hen farm next to a country church, run by Lee Eun-ha, the former missionary to the Philippines who spoke on the first day. Master Cho calls it the first place in the world to feed fermented cow dung to hens, inside a closed loop where the farm makes its own feed and fertilizer. The hosts showed chopped green corn stalk fermented for feed, a BMW water tank, IMO4 mixed with a tiller, a feed mixer and fermenting trough, hens on a bare-earth IMO4 floor with no smell, a chili field with soft soil, and a makgeolli insect trap. Laying was about 60% while feed ratios were still being tested.
After the farm visits of October 6, 2016, Master Cho Han-kyu gave the field-trip group an evening lecture, interpreted by Dr. Hoon Park, on one idea: IMO5 is not one recipe. The IMO4 base stays the same, and what goes in depends on the crop's stage: fish protein for early growth, calcium phosphate from charred bone for the changeover, calcium from charred shell for maturing. He worked it through with corn (calcium phosphate about a week before the changeover, day 58 of 180), then covered seawater at 1:30, a vinegar, LAB and yeast tonic, and an alcohol, mugwort and dropwort recovery mix with doses for pigs.
Found Corn, sugarcane and rice, the grass family, carry about 15–16 leaf layers
The trip's last farm: Konkuk's natural farming practice field in Paju, where the students' trials from the talks grew. Ahmad Jawid Zamany showed his tomato, eggplant and pepper plots under three systems; in October the natural rows were still flowering and fruiting while the others had nearly stopped. Kim Eun-ja then walked the group through her first natural year on ground farmed with chemicals for decades: careful soil groundwork, her own Microbes fertilizers (IMO5), crop residue returned to the field, and the tomatoes she over-fed with nitrogen.
