hi I am a rice farmer any other rice
farmers out there please raise your
hands I work with them so let me tell
you something the rest of you something
about being a rice farmer it’s really
hard work you have to wake up at 6:00 in
the morning go out in the field whether
it be a Sun or rain I work on your field
until the Sun Goes Down and my biggest
dream as a rice farmer is to get great
great yield by the end of the season and
sell everything on a really good price
and then all my hard work will be paid
off but one of my worst nightmares is
that before the end of the season comes
all my precious plants will be eaten
away by insects to address the issue of
insect pests the obvious choice is to
use pesticides right but a recent study
from the FAO has caught my attention it
surveyed 100 Chinese rice farmers and
found out that 23% of them suffer from
either liver or kidney damage 23% and I
thought that’s not cool because I love
my liver my kidneys
so I raise this question how can I
control the pests on my field with just
the minimum use of pesticides and I also
thought whatever I find out may be
useful to other farmers too now
throughout human history we became
really good at manipulating part of the
land so that can produce concentrated
amount of food but unfortunately insect
pests also share our appetite and for as
long as agriculture has it has existed
we’ve been at war with these insects
the spring of each year in the beginning
of the planting season we can get a head
start by doing a few things first we can
pick rice varieties that are more
resistant to certain pests also are to
be careful not to use too much nitrogen
fertilizers because pests love nitrogen
rich plants also we can plant our rice
at a greater distance so that pests have
no spaces to hide also just increasing
the flow of air and water through our
plants can really help but even if we do
everything right we can still have a
outbreak of pests and this is when we
have to face them off in a battleground
and Sun Tzu has said in art of war know
yourself and know your enemy and you can
fight a hundred battles without defeat
right so let’s get to meet our enemies
there are three insect pests that are
really problematic in my village public
enemy number one is the plan hopper ten
hoppers are really tiny a fate like
insects and they feed by sucking the
fluids out of rice and they multiply
really fast and they can fly long
distances so what we can find is a huge
group of hoppers coming in to one patch
of rice do serious damage and then they
just fly away before we can even get
around to it public enemy number two is
the leaf folder the leaf folder is a
small mass in its adult stage in the
larval stage if it’s of rice and the
leaf folder has evolved this ability to
fold the rice leaf and hide inside and
this is really hard for the rice for the
pesticide to get into public enemy
number three my most hated one is the
stem bore the same war is also a mosque
the feasts on rice in the larval stage
and stem war after it hatches
it climbs down to the base of the plan
bore a hole and go inside and the highs
and feast
inside
stem for the rest of its larval stage
and when I discover it is usually a
completely damaged toe and I was getting
to this awkward moment with these stem
bars when I pick up a damaged Hill look
at it and it’s staring at me right in
the face so that’s what I do every time
and any one of these paths can cause a
twenty to a hundred percent reduction in
yield and that’s not acceptable right so
I thought okay this year is me versus
them and I thought since I’ve claimed
war on these insects some well-tested
war strategy my really helped and you’ve
guessed it the thirty-six stratagems the
thirty-six stratagems is ancient chinese
war tax and has a collection of
thirty-six proverbs each referring to a
battle or folklore from the three
kingdoms or the warring states period
and this is really really old and
ultimate textbook and war strategy it’s
written by a general named tanto ji
sometime around 400 AD the earliest
artifact we’ve discovered on the
thirty-six stratagems it’s a soy dynasty
Jay scroll looks like that
and thirty-six stratagems that’s a lot
of strategies right so today I’m gonna
share six of my favorite
the first one is stratagem number three
to kill with a broadsword and it tells
us that if we want to damage our enemy
we can get a third party involved to do
the deed it turns out Chinese farmers
have been doing this for centuries the
third party so um we can release ducks
into the rice field because ducks eat
everything they eat all the insects and
keep their numbers down when the rice is
small we can introduce ducklings and the
Ducks and the rice will grow up together
and there
Doug has spent the rest of its life
happily foraging in the rice paddy and
of course you can also eat the dogs and
uh and scientific study has shown that
introducing ducks in rice paddy can
reduce the number of hoppers bores and
folders by thirty percent twenty three
percent and eighteen percent
respectively so this really works but
you might think that it’s not super
effective and this is because it’s hard
for the duck to get into the insects are
hiding inside the rice plant so here we
can borrow a smaller sword the trick
granted the trucco grommeted is as small
as a family of small parasitic wasps
they’re really tiny they’re among the
smallest insects on earth and what they
do is that they lay their eggs inside
the eggs of larger insects for example
our leaf folders and our stem boars and
when the baby was hatch the hose eggs
die and this is a way to keep a number
of pests down and this wasps they are
available in this very cheap commercial
packets and this is me installing one
when I predicted that a large number of
eggs might be laid and there are many
studies have shown the effectiveness of
releasing this natural enemy some
studies say that 60% reduction of
Stamper and 80% reduction of three
folder can be seen when we introduce the
wasp and this is amazing
right because this is comparable to
using pesticides
whenever feels better already and the
next strategy is a very popular one
number 15 lure the tiger away from the
mountain and here the tiger being our
enemy and the mountain being our point
of weakness or the enemy’s point of
strength this grass
it’s caught the vetiver and we can grow
the vetiver around the ridges of our
rice paddy tool or stem bores off of
rice and this is because stem bars they
prefer to lay their eggs on the vetiver
and they can do some damage to the
whatever but they can’t go through the
entire life cycle because they would die
off before it comes a dot and a studies
show that if we grow the vetiver around
the entire rest rice paddy or just um
one row on each side we can reduce the
number of stem bars in a rice paddy by
fifty to seventy percent and and the
vetiver
is a pre annual grass which means it
lives year after year I only have to do
this once perfect right the next one is
also one of my favorites because it has
this element of deceit stratagem number
ten to hide a knife behind a smile so
this means what we can do is we give our
enemy something it likes and when it’s
office guard we’re moving for the kill
this turns out to be actually a pretty
old strategy so I’ve said earlier that
insect pests really like nitrogen rich
plants and we have to be careful to
control the nitrogen level not too high
but what we can do is we pick a small
portion of a rice paddy and just
fertilize the beep out of it so here you
can see that closer to me closer to us
there’s a patch of rice that’s really
really green and really tall and that’s
my trapping plot here I’ve applied a lot
of nitrogen fertilizer and this trapping
plot is able to attract a lot of pests
and this allow me to manage a small area
instead of a huge one so if I were to
combine this with using pesticides I’m
only using a tiny portion of the
pesticides and in this very early study
I said that if we set up a trapping plot
that’s only 5% of the
area this area can attract up to 50% of
the total pest egg mass and this is
really cost-effective I can use 5% of
pesticides to get rid of 50% of the pass
right and no war is complete without the
beauty shop I’m not talking about myself
so number 31 the beauties have we can
get these commercially available sex
pheromone sticky traps and stall them in
the rice field so there are two parts on
this device on the top part there’s a
chemical that mimics the sex pheromones
of female stem boars and the male stem
warriors are naturally attracted to it
and then it gets stuck on a sticky trap
it’s a really really simple idea and it
can reduce stem or damage by 44 to 71
percent and if you guessed it yes you
can use many of these stratagems in
combination sort of like a combo move
and in fact using them in tandem is
stratagem in itself number 35 change
stratagems
so here’s us installing a light trap the
trapping plot where there’s a lot of
nitrogen and this give us an additional
10 to 20 percent of kill also you can
imagine now you can grow your bed over
around your rice paddy and then you can
install your wasps in the same patty
right so we can mix and match the last
stratagem the most famous one is number
36 if all else fails retreat now this is
so famous that there’s a Chinese idiom
that goes of the thirty-six stratagems
fleeing is passed
now why is retreating or fleeing the
past stratagem well it turns out
if we plant rice on the same part of
same plot year after year we really do
get a buildup of rice loving pests and
what we can do is we can break that
cycle by skipping a year but we don’t
just leave we just we plant something
else that’s not rights related so we can
rotate another crop in so this used to
be a rice paddy last year and this year
we’ve decided to turn it into a peanut
plot and because a lot of the pests are
rice certificate just eat rice if we
introduce one cycle of something else
the numbers can be greatly reduced in
the next season
this is especially effective for plant
hoppers
and stem bars so here we go those were
the stratagems that I thought I would
share with you but here’s a story I
didn’t come up with any of those pest
management strategies right but I did
find that using the thirty-six
stratagems
as a communicational tool really
effective and this was the story so
about a couple months ago I was standing
in my patty and I was trying to install
my newly bought sex pheromone sticky
chive when a villager walked by and he
asked me what I was doing and I said
look I’m trying to install my new sex
pheromone sticky trap and he said six
why and and I said oh so so it’s got
chemicals and it no no it pretends to be
female stampers and then the male’s will
come and then they get stuck and he said
oh you just told me that it’s a beauty
job and I said oh right I should just
said that in a couple of weeks after he
saw me again in the field and he was
like hey how’s your beauty shop going
did I catch anything so this is when I
realized that using folklore or ideas or
stories that these farmers are familiar
with are really a
active communicational tools for us to
get these new technologies across so I
went back with my colleagues we went
through our database of pest management
strategies and we made connections with
a thirty-six stratagems
and the reason why I think this is
really important is because Chinese
farmers they’re overwhelmingly
out early and they don’t have a systemic
background in science and using these
familiar ideas for us the communique we
can we can let them know about these
technologies and the mechanisms behind
them without getting into too much
scientific jargon we took this farmer
centered approach and now we use them in
a field and we use them in training and
if we found them really effective
because they’re easy they can easily
remember them about ten years ago when I
was a biology student at the University
of Toronto I was really concerned with
how scientific knowledge can move beyond
academia and into the real world and I
realized that for something like farming
agriculture where a huge number of rural
community members are involved we’re not
just facing a technical challenge we’re
also facing on communication alone and
this is why I challenged scientists and
businesses and whomever else is involved
in agriculture to join me in taking this
farmer centered approach and together we
can make this last mile delivery of new
technologies and new knowledge to those
who need them the most
she’s any no wouldn’t he
okay each is hidden say okay she should
take that doll she she’s drunk or just
some really solid young latinas home
they tell her – she ain’t sure the
console way like she likes when he
messes they call me um so yeah well how
many also a cozy house is cozy this year
so no Ho Chi Chi I can show that yeah
just attention to this whole reason
dancing or CN n Co Co me o some a young
hold on that’s in that recipient L don’t
want you can go Shion either you go come
here you see what do they sound just
some onion how could beta bitch yeah
this year it’s in a conscious he not see
sure so he what something know me then
it’s any way you feel and the Union that
so you ain’t coming soon found out
they were chain yamame TNT true face
hound or co-coach Beijing I don’t see
just last year so seeing those issue–
Yemen be may all water signatures
receive shooter Sigurd down say or
Jada can I just show that curse you that
so how you can Lee just about her souchong shoes don’t get Hammond
farmers out there please raise your
hands I work with them so let me tell
you something the rest of you something
about being a rice farmer it’s really
hard work you have to wake up at 6:00 in
the morning go out in the field whether
it be a Sun or rain I work on your field
until the Sun Goes Down and my biggest
dream as a rice farmer is to get great
great yield by the end of the season and
sell everything on a really good price
and then all my hard work will be paid
off but one of my worst nightmares is
that before the end of the season comes
all my precious plants will be eaten
away by insects to address the issue of
insect pests the obvious choice is to
use pesticides right but a recent study
from the FAO has caught my attention it
surveyed 100 Chinese rice farmers and
found out that 23% of them suffer from
either liver or kidney damage 23% and I
thought that’s not cool because I love
my liver my kidneys
so I raise this question how can I
control the pests on my field with just
the minimum use of pesticides and I also
thought whatever I find out may be
useful to other farmers too now
throughout human history we became
really good at manipulating part of the
land so that can produce concentrated
amount of food but unfortunately insect
pests also share our appetite and for as
long as agriculture has it has existed
we’ve been at war with these insects
the spring of each year in the beginning
of the planting season we can get a head
start by doing a few things first we can
pick rice varieties that are more
resistant to certain pests also are to
be careful not to use too much nitrogen
fertilizers because pests love nitrogen
rich plants also we can plant our rice
at a greater distance so that pests have
no spaces to hide also just increasing
the flow of air and water through our
plants can really help but even if we do
everything right we can still have a
outbreak of pests and this is when we
have to face them off in a battleground
and Sun Tzu has said in art of war know
yourself and know your enemy and you can
fight a hundred battles without defeat
right so let’s get to meet our enemies
there are three insect pests that are
really problematic in my village public
enemy number one is the plan hopper ten
hoppers are really tiny a fate like
insects and they feed by sucking the
fluids out of rice and they multiply
really fast and they can fly long
distances so what we can find is a huge
group of hoppers coming in to one patch
of rice do serious damage and then they
just fly away before we can even get
around to it public enemy number two is
the leaf folder the leaf folder is a
small mass in its adult stage in the
larval stage if it’s of rice and the
leaf folder has evolved this ability to
fold the rice leaf and hide inside and
this is really hard for the rice for the
pesticide to get into public enemy
number three my most hated one is the
stem bore the same war is also a mosque
the feasts on rice in the larval stage
and stem war after it hatches
it climbs down to the base of the plan
bore a hole and go inside and the highs
and feast
inside
stem for the rest of its larval stage
and when I discover it is usually a
completely damaged toe and I was getting
to this awkward moment with these stem
bars when I pick up a damaged Hill look
at it and it’s staring at me right in
the face so that’s what I do every time
and any one of these paths can cause a
twenty to a hundred percent reduction in
yield and that’s not acceptable right so
I thought okay this year is me versus
them and I thought since I’ve claimed
war on these insects some well-tested
war strategy my really helped and you’ve
guessed it the thirty-six stratagems the
thirty-six stratagems is ancient chinese
war tax and has a collection of
thirty-six proverbs each referring to a
battle or folklore from the three
kingdoms or the warring states period
and this is really really old and
ultimate textbook and war strategy it’s
written by a general named tanto ji
sometime around 400 AD the earliest
artifact we’ve discovered on the
thirty-six stratagems it’s a soy dynasty
Jay scroll looks like that
and thirty-six stratagems that’s a lot
of strategies right so today I’m gonna
share six of my favorite
the first one is stratagem number three
to kill with a broadsword and it tells
us that if we want to damage our enemy
we can get a third party involved to do
the deed it turns out Chinese farmers
have been doing this for centuries the
third party so um we can release ducks
into the rice field because ducks eat
everything they eat all the insects and
keep their numbers down when the rice is
small we can introduce ducklings and the
Ducks and the rice will grow up together
and there
Doug has spent the rest of its life
happily foraging in the rice paddy and
of course you can also eat the dogs and
uh and scientific study has shown that
introducing ducks in rice paddy can
reduce the number of hoppers bores and
folders by thirty percent twenty three
percent and eighteen percent
respectively so this really works but
you might think that it’s not super
effective and this is because it’s hard
for the duck to get into the insects are
hiding inside the rice plant so here we
can borrow a smaller sword the trick
granted the trucco grommeted is as small
as a family of small parasitic wasps
they’re really tiny they’re among the
smallest insects on earth and what they
do is that they lay their eggs inside
the eggs of larger insects for example
our leaf folders and our stem boars and
when the baby was hatch the hose eggs
die and this is a way to keep a number
of pests down and this wasps they are
available in this very cheap commercial
packets and this is me installing one
when I predicted that a large number of
eggs might be laid and there are many
studies have shown the effectiveness of
releasing this natural enemy some
studies say that 60% reduction of
Stamper and 80% reduction of three
folder can be seen when we introduce the
wasp and this is amazing
right because this is comparable to
using pesticides
whenever feels better already and the
next strategy is a very popular one
number 15 lure the tiger away from the
mountain and here the tiger being our
enemy and the mountain being our point
of weakness or the enemy’s point of
strength this grass
it’s caught the vetiver and we can grow
the vetiver around the ridges of our
rice paddy tool or stem bores off of
rice and this is because stem bars they
prefer to lay their eggs on the vetiver
and they can do some damage to the
whatever but they can’t go through the
entire life cycle because they would die
off before it comes a dot and a studies
show that if we grow the vetiver around
the entire rest rice paddy or just um
one row on each side we can reduce the
number of stem bars in a rice paddy by
fifty to seventy percent and and the
vetiver
is a pre annual grass which means it
lives year after year I only have to do
this once perfect right the next one is
also one of my favorites because it has
this element of deceit stratagem number
ten to hide a knife behind a smile so
this means what we can do is we give our
enemy something it likes and when it’s
office guard we’re moving for the kill
this turns out to be actually a pretty
old strategy so I’ve said earlier that
insect pests really like nitrogen rich
plants and we have to be careful to
control the nitrogen level not too high
but what we can do is we pick a small
portion of a rice paddy and just
fertilize the beep out of it so here you
can see that closer to me closer to us
there’s a patch of rice that’s really
really green and really tall and that’s
my trapping plot here I’ve applied a lot
of nitrogen fertilizer and this trapping
plot is able to attract a lot of pests
and this allow me to manage a small area
instead of a huge one so if I were to
combine this with using pesticides I’m
only using a tiny portion of the
pesticides and in this very early study
I said that if we set up a trapping plot
that’s only 5% of the
area this area can attract up to 50% of
the total pest egg mass and this is
really cost-effective I can use 5% of
pesticides to get rid of 50% of the pass
right and no war is complete without the
beauty shop I’m not talking about myself
so number 31 the beauties have we can
get these commercially available sex
pheromone sticky traps and stall them in
the rice field so there are two parts on
this device on the top part there’s a
chemical that mimics the sex pheromones
of female stem boars and the male stem
warriors are naturally attracted to it
and then it gets stuck on a sticky trap
it’s a really really simple idea and it
can reduce stem or damage by 44 to 71
percent and if you guessed it yes you
can use many of these stratagems in
combination sort of like a combo move
and in fact using them in tandem is
stratagem in itself number 35 change
stratagems
so here’s us installing a light trap the
trapping plot where there’s a lot of
nitrogen and this give us an additional
10 to 20 percent of kill also you can
imagine now you can grow your bed over
around your rice paddy and then you can
install your wasps in the same patty
right so we can mix and match the last
stratagem the most famous one is number
36 if all else fails retreat now this is
so famous that there’s a Chinese idiom
that goes of the thirty-six stratagems
fleeing is passed
now why is retreating or fleeing the
past stratagem well it turns out
if we plant rice on the same part of
same plot year after year we really do
get a buildup of rice loving pests and
what we can do is we can break that
cycle by skipping a year but we don’t
just leave we just we plant something
else that’s not rights related so we can
rotate another crop in so this used to
be a rice paddy last year and this year
we’ve decided to turn it into a peanut
plot and because a lot of the pests are
rice certificate just eat rice if we
introduce one cycle of something else
the numbers can be greatly reduced in
the next season
this is especially effective for plant
hoppers
and stem bars so here we go those were
the stratagems that I thought I would
share with you but here’s a story I
didn’t come up with any of those pest
management strategies right but I did
find that using the thirty-six
stratagems
as a communicational tool really
effective and this was the story so
about a couple months ago I was standing
in my patty and I was trying to install
my newly bought sex pheromone sticky
chive when a villager walked by and he
asked me what I was doing and I said
look I’m trying to install my new sex
pheromone sticky trap and he said six
why and and I said oh so so it’s got
chemicals and it no no it pretends to be
female stampers and then the male’s will
come and then they get stuck and he said
oh you just told me that it’s a beauty
job and I said oh right I should just
said that in a couple of weeks after he
saw me again in the field and he was
like hey how’s your beauty shop going
did I catch anything so this is when I
realized that using folklore or ideas or
stories that these farmers are familiar
with are really a
active communicational tools for us to
get these new technologies across so I
went back with my colleagues we went
through our database of pest management
strategies and we made connections with
a thirty-six stratagems
and the reason why I think this is
really important is because Chinese
farmers they’re overwhelmingly
out early and they don’t have a systemic
background in science and using these
familiar ideas for us the communique we
can we can let them know about these
technologies and the mechanisms behind
them without getting into too much
scientific jargon we took this farmer
centered approach and now we use them in
a field and we use them in training and
if we found them really effective
because they’re easy they can easily
remember them about ten years ago when I
was a biology student at the University
of Toronto I was really concerned with
how scientific knowledge can move beyond
academia and into the real world and I
realized that for something like farming
agriculture where a huge number of rural
community members are involved we’re not
just facing a technical challenge we’re
also facing on communication alone and
this is why I challenged scientists and
businesses and whomever else is involved
in agriculture to join me in taking this
farmer centered approach and together we
can make this last mile delivery of new
technologies and new knowledge to those
who need them the most
she’s any no wouldn’t he
okay each is hidden say okay she should
take that doll she she’s drunk or just
some really solid young latinas home
they tell her – she ain’t sure the
console way like she likes when he
messes they call me um so yeah well how
many also a cozy house is cozy this year
so no Ho Chi Chi I can show that yeah
just attention to this whole reason
dancing or CN n Co Co me o some a young
hold on that’s in that recipient L don’t
want you can go Shion either you go come
here you see what do they sound just
some onion how could beta bitch yeah
this year it’s in a conscious he not see
sure so he what something know me then
it’s any way you feel and the Union that
so you ain’t coming soon found out
they were chain yamame TNT true face
hound or co-coach Beijing I don’t see
just last year so seeing those issue–
Yemen be may all water signatures
receive shooter Sigurd down say or
Jada can I just show that curse you that
so how you can Lee just about her souchong shoes don’t get Hammond
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