Abstract
Recent year, natural farming and organic farming has received attention owing to rising interest in the health benefits and concern environmental problem. These farming methods can be considered as low energy consumption by these farming, because they do not use chemical fertilizer and pesticide. On the other side, these farming methods also can be considered as high energy consumption by weeding and rice field management. Therefore, purpose of this study is to clarify life cycle energy consumption of the rice cultivation without chemical fertilizer and pesticide use by investigation of these farmers. This study investigated A and B farmer who are doing organic farming in Shinshiro, Aichi prefecture, and C farmer who is doing organic farming and D farmer who is doing natural farming in Shirakawa, Gifu prefecture. Land use area of these farmers is less than 0.5 ha, and located in hilled rural area. In addition, these farmer works by manual and drying rice under the sun. Especially, B and C farmer interact with consumer and student through these activities. This study compared the results with conventional rice cultivation of previous study using chemical fertilizer and pesticide having 15 ha of land area. The result showed that energy consumption per land use area of investigated farmer has wide range with 4.3～9.5 GJ/ha. In addition, energy consumption of investigated farmer is less than conventional rice cultivation, because they can work by manual and drying rice under the sun. These results indicated that interaction with consumers, traditional farming method like dry of rice under the sun and years of experience for rice cultivation without chemical fertilizer and pesticide use are contributing reduction of the energy consumption.
