A Japanese farmer visited Iowa State on Tuesday to teach about the benefits of sustainable agriculture.

Takao Furuno has been farming for 24 years, and for the past 15 he has integrated a host of farming techniques to boost the output of his rice farm. Initially, Furuno put ducks into his rice paddies to help fertilize the rice and control weeds and pests.

After finding the ducks’ presence increased soil fertility and made the plants grow stronger, he decided to add other animals and plants into the system, he said. By adding a nitrogen-fixing plant called azolla, the ducks were given more to eat and the water in the rice paddy had more nitrogen. He also added loaches – small fish – which eat plankton in the water and help fertilize the rice.

At the end of the year, Furuno was able to harvest the rice, and eat the fish and ducks, he said.

“I found that the more you put into the system, the more you are able to harvest,” he said through an interpreter.

Furuno doesn’t only grow rice in his fields. After harvesting the rice, he plants wheat. Once the wheat has been harvested, he then grows figs and a variety of vegetables such as potatoes, onions and tomatoes, he said.

Much of the produce that he grows is feed to his family, but Furuno also sells the crops and livestock to 100 local families.

Furuno said his method has been adopted in countries, such as Vietnam, India and countries in Africa. He also addressed the necessity for countries around the world to adopt a similar method of sustainable agriculture to help with the current world hunger problem.

“Nature can live with itself,” he said.

Miriam Munamava, graduate student in agronomy, said she attended the seminar because of Furuno’s interesting book title, “The Power of Duck.”

“It’s amazing, from such a small area, how he can have so many different things,” she said.

The large crowd attending contained not only students and faculty, but local farmers as well.

Robert “Barney” Bahrenfuse, a livestock farmer from Grinnell, heard about the seminar at a local conference for farmers. He said he’s been convinced that sustainable agriculture was the way to go in farming for a long time.

“It sure is wonderful that they brought [Furuno] here,” he said.

About 90 people attended.