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I didn't understand: 1. how they didn't have pest problems if they planted in fractal patterns 2. but they did have pest problems if they didn't plant at the
by aetherspawn 9y ago
I didn't understand:
1. how they didn't have pest problems if they planted in fractal patterns
2. but they did have pest problems if they didn't plant at the same time
Could someone kindly explain that in a little more depth?
- livingparadox 9y agoIts actually that planting "in synchrony" reduced pests. Balancing that with limited water supplies resulted in the fractal pattern, which created close to an optimal yield.
- oelmekki 9y ago> When farmers are planting at different times, pests can move from one field to another, but when farmers plant in synchrony, pests drown and the pest load is reduced. The strategy is that if there are several fields planted for the same amount of bugs, each field receive less bugs than if it was the only one planted (on the contrary, if they were planted one after an other, the whole bug population would just jump from field to field).
- aetherspawn 9y agoThanks, I thought when it said drown it literally meant something to do with water but this makes a lot of sense now.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mamon 9y agoYes, they meant literal drowning of bugs when the field is flooded with water, which is one of the stages of growing rice. Bigger the area flooded at once, lower the chance for the average bug to escape. Fractal pattern arises as a trade-off because water supply is limited - if it wasn't for that they would probably just flood ALL the fields at once.
- cptskippy 9y agoSo what's going to happen with coordinated planting long term? Will the bug population expand? Does the narrower window when there are crops available negatively affect the bug population compared to a staggard planting?
- positr0n 9y agoBasically they are using the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predator_satiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predator_satiation strategy to reduce loses.