Surprisingly, soil microbial diversity and activity value analysis exceeded 200 million in a paddy field rich in sludge worms!

Hokkaido Toma Green Life Mamoru Segawa

At the time of interview 2010

Toma Green Life cultivates rice and vegetables on approximately 140 ha of land in Toma Town, Hokkaido.We produce organic agricultural products in 9% of the area of vegetables, fields and paddy fields.There are 15 employees, including clerks, and about 100 people, including temporary staff, are working at peak times.
At Toma Green Life, soil microbial diversity and activity value analysis was performed on five fields, and the activity value of paddy fields surprisingly exceeded 5 million.With a deviation value of 200, it is equivalent to the top 83.8% of agricultural fields nationwide.President Mamoru Segawa asked about soil microbial diversity/activity value analysis and organic farming.

Q. What was your first impression after examining soil microbial diversity and activity?

I felt that it was very good to have a scale for soil microorganisms.This is because I have always believed that microorganisms play a central role in the growth of crops.
However, even I myself cannot understand why the activity value of the paddy field that I investigated this time is so high.One thing I can say is that the paddy fields we investigated were older in terms of organic farming, and were clayey.It can be imagined that the new or old paddy field and soil quality affect the value.
Where the value is low, it seems that there are many new fields.At Toma Green Life, we rent and cultivate many fields, so we would like to increase the soil microbial diversity and activity value over the next 10 years.

A plate that analyzes soil microbial diversity and activity values in the paddy rice fields of Mr. Toma Green Life

Q. Please tell us about your thoughts on organic farming.

organic spinach

An organic red bean field.Fresh and beautiful!

I think we should create soil that does not cause continuous cropping failure even if we do continuous cropping.In our tomato fields, we have been growing tomatoes continuously for more than 10 years.If the microbes in the soil are well balanced, I don't think continuous cropping failure will occur.
Also, taking the opportunity of being designated as a model town for organic farming, I investigated whether loaches inhabit the rice fields.Unfortunately, I couldn't find it at the beginning of the survey, so I put the loach into the rice field from outside.It seems that a convenient environment for the loach to live has been created, and the number has increased explosively since the second year.
We are also investigating the sludge worm.Since sludge worms are food for loaches, it can be said that the increase in sludge worms and the increase in loaches are related.There are hundreds of times more sludge worms in my rice fields than in rice fields with chemical fertilizers.

Q. What do you think about the future of soil microbial diversity and activity value analysis?

We believe that there is a correlation between above-ground biodiversity and soil microbial diversity.In other words, I think that in a field where the ground is balanced, the microorganisms in the soil are also balanced.
We conducted training using the results of soil microbial diversity and activity value analysis.This is to quantify the status of microorganisms in the soil, which until now relied on cans, and use it for future farming.I hope that this technology, which is useful when considering future countermeasures, will become more widespread in Japan in the future.