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| ▲ Hansalim Farmers Association Sancheong / Branch Head Lee Sang-il | ||
Long tail tadpole shrimp is often called ‘the living fossil’. The academic says the history of the shrimp goes 3 billion years back with the shape almost same as today. When it comes to its quality, it is called ‘the cleaner of nature’. By using 30 legs, it clears organic matter, mosquito larvae and phytoplankton with its mouth and irritates weeds and pests to grow. For this reason, eco-friendly farmers have used it to grow grains for a long time. And the members of the Hansalim Farmers Association Sancheong are one of these eco-friendly farmers.
“Farmers in Sancheong County started to grow grains under the motto ‘no agrichemicals’ from 1984. We joined the Hansalim South Gyeongsang Province in 1996 and started to supply organic rice before turning into the current Hansalim Farmers Association Sancheong” explains the branch head Lee Sang-il.
The branch is consisted of 208 farmhouses of 18 farm villages and produces yearly 1,100 tons of organic grains. Apart from cultivating and supplying organically grown agricultural products, the branch is organizing field activities for children such as picking up chestnuts, catching grasshoppers and making rice syrup.
Chahwang-myeon in Sancheong County is a vast rice paddy 350 to 500 meters above sea level. The paddy is organic-certified and farmers start to plant green barley from November after harvesting rice in late October. Long tail tadpole shrimps, the cleaners of nature, started to live in this paddy from the 70s and farmers use no agrichemicals.
At the 2020 Korea Star Organic Farm Products Competition held at COEX, Seoul, last August, the branch head Lee won the presidential prize with his white rice by beating 330 kinds of grains grown homeland.
김태인 기자 red3955@hanmail.net
