Korean people eat rice as a major food. So, growing rice is an important part of our dietary lives. Weeds have been always become a big problem in growing rice from the past and farmers use the agricultural pesticides as the easiest way to kill the weeds and this has been considered environmentally-unfriendly way to get rid of the weeds.

Using freshwater snails is one of the eco-friendly ways to grow rice. These snails, which look like small conches, were usually used in medicines or for cooking. But after finding out that these snails eat up the weeds selectively, they have been used as a natural pesticide for rice farming. This method was accidentally discovered by a Korean farmer who had failed in breeding freshwater snails. He threw the snails, which remained after parceling out, into the rice pads. Surprisingly, it was discovered that the snails only ate the weeds out of the rice and helped the rice grow healthier.

The method is very simple. If you release the snails in the rice paddies, they will go around and eat all of the weeds. Freshwater snails are well known as big eaters and they especially like to eat weeds. The rice plants grown by the freshwater snail methods have a strong life force as well as are strongly resistant to damage caused by diseases. There is a small rice field in Yangjae-Ecological Park that I reported here earlier in May.  It used to do the snail farming every year only except for this year for some reason.  Even if there is no snail this year, I would like to share the picture of the rice field this year (without snails). I remember that I saw snails on the leaves of the weeds in the past, which I am sorry not to share the picture of the snails in the Yangjae Ecological Park. The first and second pix are ones from other sources.

However, there are a few drawbacks for this method. Firstly, it can't solve the problem with harmful insects, which may be settled by another method using ducks. Another problem is that the freshwater snails that have enough ability to eat weeds may be alien species to certain area. Actually, Korean native snails may not be used for this rice growing method because snails indigenous to Korea are a bit small and don't have enough ability to eat the weeds that should be removed.