@RiceRunner, If you have stuff made and opensourced, then please wiki it.  I can guarantee people will be interested.

You're definitely right that there are farming techniques that do not require fertilization. Unfortunately for many rice farmers in Cambodia, this is not the case. Cambodia has the poorest soil quality in all of south east asia, and rice is their staple crop.  The current method of fertilization that most Cambodian farmers are using to make a living is incredibly inefficient and harmful to the environment compared to properly used Fertilizer Deep Placement.

Right on DavidIam. Surely one of the goals of Factor E Farm is to have communities ready for the Collapse (Jared Diamond), Peak Oil, Financial Crises etc. As a Certified Organic/Biodynamic food producer, teacher, mentor, consultant I suggest no Petro-chemical fertilisers nor spreader. Old fashioned manure spreaders with a cowlings (metal sheets forming a funnel) are used to make compost windrows and later with cowling open compost is spread over the field before bed forming and transplanting seedlings. Our grand fathers used liquid manure/herb teas to feed the soil, lately 'compost teas' are the fashion. Weeds are by definition a plant in the wrong spot. We call them correctly: herbage. Ley farming of old had fertile pastures and animals. Live Stock medicate themselves on herbs in the Ley Fields. Herbage grows indicating the elements they are creating of which the soil is missing. Read Pfeiffer: what weeds tell us + soil fertility. What is needed is tanks (no plastic) to brew the liquid teas and then irrigate it out with a small Travelling Irrigator / Manurator onto the Green Manure Crop. This is then ploughed in to feed the soil biology before planting.