Rice growing refined at Yoshi's Kaiwaka eco house

Next time you pop a packet of easy-cook rice into the microwave for a couple of minutes, spare a thought for Yoshimasa Sakurai who starts preparing rice for his evening meal several months before he needs it.

The former University of Kansai professor has been growing rice on his Kaiwaka property since the late 1990s. Last month he finished harvesting and processing his latest crop from the 131sq metre paddy at the bottom of his Gibbons Road property. This year’s yield is one of the lowest he’s recorded – and equates to only about half of what Yoshi needs to keep him in two meals a day for a year.

Yoshi, 72, is trying to determine whether he can use technology to support sustainable living on his property while minimising his reliance on fossil fuels and a consumer-based society. His eco-friendly home and day-to-day living form the basis of an ongoing experiment which started in 1990.

He thinks that the dry, cool summer could be to blame for the production of only 30kgs of rice compared with 36kg harvested in 2009. His best yield yet was 80kgs in 2002. The amount harvested is affected not only by climate, but also shows a biannual behaviour pattern, Yoshi says. He is sure that New Zealand can succeed in growing rice, but admits to not having fully mastered the process yet.

“I have made a lot of mistakes and tried to overcome them. I think this process is helpful for solving problems in the future. Mistakes are important and agriculture comes from experience.

“One of the most interesting things I have learned while growing rice is experimenting with its perennial character. I started leaving in old roots of particular lines every year and now all the lines are from old roots, dating back to 2005. They have already started sprouting again since harvesting. Growing rice using its perennial character gives me insights into the interesting aspects of plants. I have a few concerns, however. For example if there should be disease after some years, whether new seedlings should be the replacements and also how fertiliser should be used.”

Growing rice perennially is an alternative that appeals to Yoshi as it is not such hard work as the more conventional practice of annual cultivation. However, it is thought that perennial cultivation results in lower yields, so the quest to find the best way to suit Yoshi’s lifestyle continues.

Suppressing couch grass in the paddy is also testing the system. Yield is sometimes sacrificed due to the necessity of covering roots with black plastic in order to kill the couch. This can restrict the amount of light, warmth and oxygen available to promote spring growth.

Work in the rice paddy starts in September once any risk of frost has passed. Seeds selected for sowing are placed in salt water to determine which are healthy (they sink to the bottom). They are then rinsed and kept in clean water until they form eyes and sprout. These seeds are sown into a corner of the rice paddy. Once around 20cm long, Yoshi washes the seedlings’ roots to separate them, and plants them out into the main paddy; three seedlings to each spot, 30cm apart. The paddy is filled with water at this stage. It is fenced off to keep out predators and covered with bird-proof netting. The seedlings like a lot of fertiliser and potassium, in particular.

When the tops of the plants begin to bow, water is drained gradually from the paddy, until eventually the rice grass starts to fall. Then the paddy is completely drained to force the roots deeper into the clay to maximise the uptake of nutrients. Once the majority of the grains are yellowy-brown in April the rice is ready for harvest. The harvested plants hang in the greenhouse for a week. Then dry, the stalks are threshed using a foot-operated thresher.

Yoshi records the yield from each plant in grams and notes which line of his Kaiwaka rice performs the best. As well as breeding for yield, he’s also interested in the selection of plants for lengthier stalks which could be used for thatching. Nothing goes to waste in the process, Yoshi says. The rice grass can be used for making sandals, or chopped up and included in the cobbing mix for house walls.

Rice is Yoshi’s main food crop as it includes a variety of nutrients if eaten in its brown or unpolished state. Traditional Japanese rice is of the japonica genus, which has a shorter grain, and is “sticky” because it contains amylopectin as well as amylose.

“It fills you up, is more satisfying as it stays in the stomach longer, and has fewer calories than non-sticky (indica) rice. Because of the variety of nutrients in rice, such as essential amino acids, vitamins, starch, I don’t need to grow much of any other food. We have to be modest in choosing foods. Wanting too much is based on materialism.”
Yoshi hopes that rice growing will become more popular before the fuel needed to transport food from overseas runs out.

“We have to prepare for such a time when we can no longer import food because of the energy crisis.”
He’s established that the Yukihikari variety from Hokkaido is well suited to Kaiwaka conditions and is keen to give encouragement to local growers, and to start them off with seeds that he’s saved from his own lines of rice.

Info: www.ecohouse.co.nz