Abstract
Abstract Introduction Modern intensive rice production has brought a large amount of environmental pollution and do not guarantee the safety of rice quality. Thus, to improve the farmer's rice production model to reduce agro-chemicals is of great importance to decrease pollution and to guarantee the security of food quality. Here, our experiments illustrated that nomadic rice-duck complex ecosystem (RD) could reduce energy input and increase both energy output and the values of the product safety index based on energy (PSI). Results According to the results of our experiments, RD and rice monoculture production system (RM) were -0.6 and -0.78, respectively, which indicated that the safety potential of products in RD was higher than that of RM. Protein yield based on RD was significantly higher than that of RM. The output/input, gross income, and net income of RD were 15.26%, 39.51%, and 44.80%, respectively, higher than that of RM; the data suggest that the economic benefits of RD were greater than that of RM. Conclusions Consequently, as an intermediate-type technology, RD could become a feasible alternative that could reduce agro-chemical application rate without decreasing rice yield and increasing labor intensity. Furthermore, as an inheritance and development of the Chinese farming culture, RD is a classic Chinese farming technology withstanding more than 700 years of tests.
Highlights
Modern intensive rice production has brought a large amount of environmental pollution and do not guarantee the safety of rice quality
Previous studies indicated that rice-duck complex ecosystem was a form of ecological engineering that makes use of the symbiotic relationship between rice and ducks to effectively utilize nutrients, reduce the quantity of chemical fertilizer and pesticide, increase product safety and overall productivity, decrease pollutants discharged from the paddy field (Wang et al 2004; Zhang et al 2002), and reduce the emission of greenhouse gas, such as methane (Huang et al 2000; Huang et al 2005) and nitric oxide (Zhang et al 2008; Li et al 2009)
The energy content, transformity of the materials, and services were based on Table 1; the economic content was based on cash payments of these two rice production systems according to the price during the given years
Summary
Modern intensive rice production has brought a large amount of environmental pollution and do not guarantee the safety of rice quality. To improve the farmer's rice production model to reduce agro-chemicals is of great importance to decrease pollution and to guarantee the security of food quality. Adopting modern intensive rice production will continually increase the pollution to the environment and cannot guarantee the safety of rice quality. Previous studies indicated that rice-duck complex ecosystem was a form of ecological engineering that makes use of the symbiotic relationship between rice and ducks to effectively utilize nutrients, reduce the quantity of chemical fertilizer and pesticide, increase product safety and overall productivity, decrease pollutants discharged from the paddy field (Wang et al 2004; Zhang et al 2002), and reduce the emission of greenhouse gas, such as methane (Huang et al 2000; Huang et al 2005) and nitric oxide (Zhang et al 2008; Li et al 2009)
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