““Don’t you know?” he asked with a great show of incredulity. “This is the latest scientific method. It can produce more.” I hadn’t planted rice seedlings before, but I knew what every Japanese kid learned in elementary school. If you plant rice seedlings too close together, they crowd one another out and can’t produce a decent crop. Rice Growing 101, if you like. But then I thought, This guy can’t be an amateur. He must know something I don’t. Maybe they’ve discovered something new. So I carried on. Needless to say, the crop was a miserable failure. I often wonder how many people starved as a result of that idiotic policy.””
