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| Culturing IMO |
Besides the advanced ICT developments in the country, the people of South Korea are blessed with abundant Agriculture produce which provides a healthy diet and healthy people. So what is the secret behind South Korea’s agriculture sector? What is the uniqueness, what did they do? It’s organic farming.
South Korea’s Ministry of Agriculture imposed regulations on using fertilizers and encouraged farmers to practice organic farming.
The organic farming system in Korea has utilized the advantages of micro-organisms to improve soil fertility, fruit and crop production, and livestock. The secret behind all these high yields in Agriculture is micro-organism. So what is micro-organism? Micro-organism has the following characteristics: are not visible to the naked eye, microscopic unicellular organisms, but Algae or fungi can be identified with the naked eye in some cases, Eukaryotic cell (protozoa, algae, fungi), Prokaryotic cell ( bacteria, rickettsia, chlamydia, mycoplasma, and virus. All these comprise of the micro-organism family.
The next is bacteria. Whenever the word bacteria is called, the first impression would be a disease. So what really is it? Bacteria refers to Escherichia coli (E-coli), Salmonella, Cholera, Plague, Tetanus, Tuberculosis, virus (AIDS, smallpox, herpes, influenza), Fungal (candida) and parasite (malaria). These are all species and types of bacteria.
The other form of micro-organism is Probiotics. These are the form of micro-organism that lives in the intestine of human beings. There are about 100 trillion cells, they form 2% of the body weight, and helps the immune system of the human body, and therefore, these Probiotics are important for the human body.
There are numerous reasons for using micro-organism: (1) harmony with the soil, (2) rescues soil (3) can withstand almost all weather conditions, (4) easily adapt to various environments, and (5) it is cheap and easy to make. Research discovered that in Korea there are 1,837 species of micro-organisms, 26 species of bacteria, 3 actinomycetes, 1 yeast, and 4 species of nitrogen-fixed bacteria.
Indigenous micro-organisms (IMO) have special characteristics, these include: (1) decompose organic matter into simple compounds or atoms, (2) suppress disease, (3) catalysts of natural chemistry in the soil, and (4) activate the ecosystem.
The benefit of using IMO are numerous, these include: (1) there is an effect of improving the balance of intestinal micro-organisms and promoting health and reducing odor when feeding micro-organisms like pigs to pigs, (2) reported that immunity increases when fed to young pigs, (3) germination rate of soybean increased by 8.6 ~ 20.7%, (4) ammonia gas is reduced by 12 ~ 18% and hydrogen sulfide is decreased by 19 ~ 38% when composed is fermented, (5) reduce pesticides and heavy metals (copper, chromium, zinc, etc.), and (6) composting of food waste.
Although IMO cannot be seen with the naked eye, these micro-species can be created and collected for farming. IMO can be collected at any time and from several sites. Different seasons have different length of days to culture. In this regard, during spring and autumn, it takes 7 – 10 days, 4 -5 days in the summer, and 10 or more in the winter. Do not collect IMO in the rainy season, avoid moist areas for collecting, where anaerobic micro-organisms (red mold, blue mold, etc.) can occur easily.
In summary, IMO is widely used across Korea, farmers are discouraged to use fertilizer but urged to use organic farming. Today, Korea’s agricultural sector produces varieties of products from the use of IMO.