On 4/27/2024 at 10:06 PM, rickudon said:

We have a one rai rice field. After the rice harvest (done by an old combine harvester) we get barely enough rice to pay the man. It doesn't cut the straw. Wifey then gets a man to the plough the rice field (she doesn't really understand farming) which results in a one metre high pile of rice straw, roots and soil on one side of the field. Because it is dry season it doesn't rot down, and now the field is uneven. I could just abandon that bit of field and wait a year or 2 for it to rot away, but still have a heap of soil left which is uneven.

So what do i do?

Rake the straw out of the pile, and ..... burn it.

 

 

I do dry it out completely and burn in small piles, to minimise the pollution and any local smoke issues. I would like to compost it, but it already has taken up a lot of my time (months!) and would need a lot of water in the dry season, which would have to be hand carried. Straw by itself doesn't compost well, need to mix it up ideally. Cannot bury it, dry season rice paddy is like concrete.

 

I have now banned rice growing, to much hassle, no profit (actually a financial loss). Now what do we do with a rice paddy that floods once a year and grows lots of rank grass? Low cost/labour answers only please.

Grow and sell the rank grass  ! It probably has  more  feed  value than rice straw  for  cattle.

When you go inspect the one rai that is never /not yours that traditionally/ historically has probably produced  enough rice to feed family and maybe a bit more for a  few baht to by a pumpkin or two from the old girl down road who tries to supplement her 5/600 baht a month pension by  growing things over her toilet tank because her two  rectal sons now in Bangkok now are too busy paying for the new modified  pickup with  no noise suppression, custom alloy  wheels  and loan sharks hunting them  down.

 

19 hours ago, 0ffshore360 said:

if macerated and turned under soil

 

"If" is the key word.  Cutting the stocks down to a small enough size doesn't happen. Perhaps too time or labour intensive on a large scale. 

 

That, and the soil conditions at the time the cuttings are turned into the soil and how long they're left to decompose. 

 

No scientific papers to link to or footnote, just my observations after going to school and working as a gardener for a long time.  Many theories are espoused by the PhDs that are rarely executed (or executable) properly in the field (no pun intended), hence the variable outcomes.  

 

The rest of your post is all over the place - I understand - and agree with what you're saying and how you got there.  It's important to examine the angles and try to come up with the best, most workable solution. 

 

The good intentions behind subsidies end up being manipulated by the clever/greedy people and whatever problems they were supposed to address remain unsolved.