Fighting Weeds in the Rice Fields of Japan!

Watch Fighting Weeds in the Rice Fields of Japan! - thejapanchannel on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Hey guys, another video for our Nature and Environment in Japan playlist.

00:04So this time of year everything's growing really quickly of course because it's really

00:08hot and really steamy, it's like being in a greenhouse.

00:11So between the rice fields there you can see it's getting pretty wild over there.

00:15The farmers try to cut down on that because it allows rodents to get into the rice fields

00:22and eat the rice and also the weeds themselves spread into the rice fields and that can reduce

00:28the yield of the field as well.

00:32So what you see this time of year is these poor guys, it's between 36 and 39 degrees

00:38in this part of central Japan every day and it hasn't rained for a couple of weeks and

00:43it's just really hot and steamy and intense out there and everything's growing really

00:48fast so these guys are out there every day, all day.

00:53That's the most common, using the brush cutter is the most common way to cut the weeds back

00:58which is really hard work, back breaking work as you can imagine.

01:03However some of them, some of the farmers do have some better technology.

01:10This guy's got a pretty clever style of mower, so it's a self-driving lawn mower basically

01:18that he can just sort of walk along there and steer it which looks much better doesn't

01:23it, much better than the brush cutter.

01:25So he just walks along and just steers it where he wants it to go.

01:31That's much better isn't it, that's better than the brush cutter.

01:34And then better than that is this, obviously it depends on whether they can get access

01:41to the tract, for the tractor because obviously the tractor's pretty big and usually between

01:45the rice fields isn't big enough for that, however in this case he can run along beside

01:51his little road there and use the device off the side of the tractor which looks even

01:57better again doesn't it.

02:02So that tractor of his he'd use for all sorts of things, he'd use it for tilling his rice

02:07fields when they were dry, when there was nothing in there, probably not for planting

02:13they have a special planting machine and also for cultivating they have a special machine

02:17as well but he'd use that tractor a lot in the rice fields as well.

02:22Anyway hard work that farming isn't it, more videos coming soon.