# Talk:Rice-fish system

There is no attempt at balance. The greatest difficulty in rice-fish culture is that large amounts of chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides are used in growing rice - most of these are harmful to fish. Most insecticides kill fish. There are many other disadvantages, easily found, none are listed here. It is an advert basically. ZadieTwinge (talk) 11:44, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

That does seem a bit of a "point of view". The sources and the article text are quite clear that farmers choose (for which perhaps read: feel obliged) to cut down on chemicals in their rice-fish and other polycultures, and no wonder; but the mutual benefits, reliably measured, work nonetheless, not least because fish eat pests and provide a natural fertilizer. Unusually for a polyculture, where it is often the case that the total yield increases, at the price of the "primary" crop, in many cases the rice-fish system actually produces more rice too, again, reliably measured. So perhaps the disadvantages are not quite as many and various as you suppose. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:08, 28 March 2024 (UTC)