The only place in the world where crops grow themselves, page 1

Hi, fellow ATSers! I'd like to tell you about an amazing place in China where rapeseed crops grows themselves! No, you don't reap what you sow there; you reap what you don't sow!

There's an area of 200 sq. km in Xingshan County, Hubei, China, where farmers don't have to plant seeds to grow rapeseed. Every winter, the locals will chop down all the shrubs on the hill; when spring comes, there will be a shower, and rapeseed will start emerging from nowhere. By April, the entire area will be covered in rapeseed like this (www.publicdomainpictures.net... not in Xingshan, but rapeseed looks the same everywhere):



According to a local farmer, the 20 villages in the area have benefited from this strange phenomenon for a long time. Each family can harvest over 60 kg of rapeseed every year, which is more than enough to make a living. In 1935, there was a giant flood in winter which was so bad that it uprooted every tree on the hill. Next spring, the rapeseed popped up as usual.

The local rumour has it that Wang Zhaojun, one of four beauties of Ancient China and a native of Xingshan, returned to Xingshan before being married of to the Xiongnu. She planted rapeseed seeds and chanted, 'sprout repeatedly, sprout repeatedly, sprout every year'. Although that's just a legend, no scientist has been able to come up with a good explanation yet, although many have visited the area and proposed theories.

Strangely, this amazing place has received very little attention; if Google is correct, this should be the first English webpage on the mystery. Maybe Monsanto doesn't want us to know about it so that they can keep producing genetically modified rapeseed...

Speaking of amazing crops, there's another amazing piece of farmland in Yuelai, Shizhu, Sichuan, China. Among the many terraced fields in the monastery, there are five where no matter what species of rice you sow, you always get high-quality aromatic rice! (In case you didn't manage to figure it out, aromatic rice is a type of rice with an aroma.) Here's a picture of the field (this is an actual picture of the area, unlike the pic above):



Like the rapeseed of Xingshan, these crops are not affected by droughts or floods. You get sweet, aromatic rice in these five fields, regardless of the weather.

The rice is so good that, during the Han Dynasty, commoners were not allowed to eat it. Government officials would have farmers harvest the crops and bring them to the imperial court for the Emperor and his family to enjoy. That's why this rice is also known as 'imperial rice'.

Science doesn't have a definite answer for this field, either. The Qianlong Emperor wrote in a poem that this was due to the good 'earthly qi'. Some scientists believe that there's an unknown mineral in the soil that can control the water content in the soil and encourage plant growth, which would explain the drought- and flood-proof crops, but not the fact that they turn into aromatic rice.

What do you think about these agricultural miracles?

reply to post by watchitburn

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How about "miraculous".?
I'm off to reading a little more about this. Pretty cool

reply to post by diqiushiwojia

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SO what your saying is that rapeseed is an 'annual' and even though they don't replant, every spring, the rapeseed returns anyway? That seems pretty darn awesome, but you are also saying that this isn't the only place in China where this occurs? Are these ancestoral farms? It sounds fascinating, that an annual plant would produce such consistent yields year after year without re-planting! But then again, China has been doing some pretty amazing things for a very, very long time!

Thanks for the support, everyone

reply to post by CarbonBase

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Yep, the rapeseed returns every year, no replanting needed, and yes, those are ancestral farms. The old farmer said that he had been consuming the rapeseed since he was born, and so were the generation before him. That means they've been eating those crops for at least 150 years or so. If the legend is true, though, then they've been passing down the land since 33 BC, which was two millennia ago!

As far as I know, this is the only place in China where rapeseed springs out of nowhere, but as I wrote later in the OP, it's not the only place where crops are flood-proof and drought-proof.

reply to post by diqiushiwojia

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Wow, something I've never heard about before! Thank you. Cool.

It begs to be looked into by agriculturalists... umm, not from Monsanto, though. They'd napalm it and kill any one within talking distance if they could... and given the corruption in the Chinese govt they still might... so maybe you just endangered an entire local pop by letting this secret out.

But why, assuming the info is good, is this so rare? Crops occurred before we reaped and sowed. Annuals would die and shed seeds and spring back in ...uh, spring... something about Demeter, yada yada.

Nature does pretty well by herself. Peasants with hoes are just a sometimes bonus.

reply to post by diqiushiwojia

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I gave you an F&S before I realized you did NOT include references.

Got any links? Thanks, sofi

Where are some sources?

I get one paper when I look up the rice. 118.145.16.217...

But I can't read Chinese. ;(

reply to post by aLLeKs

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Maybe people just forget how the cycle of life works when corporations stay out of it?
Plants grow, they go to seed, seed falls in dirt, another plant grows, and the process repeats. Over and over.
Nature.

I was originally thinking some of the posts were sarcasm, but I don't know?
It's hard to tell on the Internet.

Those canola fields in China, are in a zone where the conditions are right, and it's not genetically modified, therefore just reseeds itself.

reply to post by aLLeKs

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I've never grown crops but I've grown a bit of flowers.. That's why I was kind of confused about the specialness to the rapeseed story.

The fact that people are so detached from nature is what the real conspiracy in this thread is.

reply to post by snowspirit

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Is it a perennial?

I am reading it's an annual and biennial in the right climate.

I figured the rapeseeds were 'self-sowing annuals', which give the illusion of being perennial.

There are plants in my garden that return each year. They are annuals and I don't replant them. Just from the seeds falling to the ground and germinating on the soil surface on their own.

**edit: I should have read more of your posts. Seems you already knew this

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