An institutional and policy framework to foster integrated rice–duck farming in Asian developing countries

Abstract

Asia has accounted for the vast majority of the world's rice and meat-duck production. In the integrated rice–duck farming (IRDF) system, ducklings are released into rice paddies in order to maximize the use of renewable resources in a closed-cycle flow of nutrients during rice vegetation periods. Rice–duck farming used to be widely adopted in tropical and subtropical eastern Asian countries, but has remained unpopular in the wake of prevailing agricultural productivism characterized by specialization, intensification, mechanization and excessive dependence on agrochemicals. This paper sets out institutional pathways that can redevelop IRDF in Asia. These include organic food certification systems, organic farmers' cooperatives, community-wide organic farming, localized technical extension and educational services, and between-farm rice–duck integration. A comprehensive package of these institutional tools would further expedite the expansion of IRDF particularly in low-income Southeast Asia where the rice or duck farming landscape is overwhelmingly dominated by smallholders.

Keywords:

• crop–livestock integration
• permaculture principles
• organic farmers’ cooperatives
• community-wide organic farming
• between-farm integration

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their critical and constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper. The author owes much to Lee Jugrs for her rigorous proofreading of a revised version and for making valuable editorial suggestions.

Notes

1. Furuno (1992) was first written in Japanese and then translated into English in 2001 with a title ‘The power of ducks: Integrated rice and duck farming’.

2. It is reported that directly seeded rice fields have been damaged by golden apple snails much more seriously than transplanted fields because golden apple snails feed avidly on sprouts and young seedlings (Carlsson, 2006; Liang et al., 2014; Plan, Saska, Cagauan, & Craik, 2008).

3. The author was not able to visit Japan for the purpose of this study. The information relevant to Japan in this table was taken from Furuno (2012).

4. The term ‘community-based’ should not be interpreted to flag a government–community contract over the use of public land as is the case in the ‘community-based forest management’ programme in the Philippines.

5. Huber, Schmid, and Napo-Bitantem (2012) reported that many Asian countries were drafting organic food regulations including Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam as of 2011.