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[SANET-MG] low input rice system
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/LIMFNR.phpISIS Press Release 06/10/05
Less is More for Nepali Rice
A low input rice system has more than doubled yield in Nepal. Rhea Gala
The sources for this article are posted on ISIS members’ website.
Details here
For the past three years a dozen farmers in Morang District near the
Nepali-Indian border 300 miles south of the capital Kathmandu have been
testing a new cultivation method for rice. Using only a fraction of the
normal amount of local mansuli variety rice seed and far less water than
usual, their yield has more than doubled. The method does not need the
fields to be flooded, as is traditionally the case, and chemical
fertilisers and pesticides are not required.
Success arises from the mode of cultivation where the seedlings are
transplanted from the nursery beds when they are only two weeks old
instead of six; and the field is drained instead of flooded. Seedlings
are spaced farther apart and produce many more shoots than when planted
conventionally, causing the harvest to more than double. A normal paddy
field needs 50 kilogrammes of seed per hectare, yet this method uses
less than ten kilogrammes.
This is the latest success for this type of low input rice cultivation
which is called the ‘System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and has
already given marvellous yields in many countries.(see “Fantastic rice
yields: Fact or fallacy?”, “Top Indian rice geneticist rebuts SRI
critics”’, and “Does SRI work?” SiS27)
Farmers reaped bumper harvests
Farmer Dan Bahadur Rajbansi was transplanting his rice seedlings this
year using the system of rice intensification as many others delayed
while awaiting a late monsoon. Ananta Ram Majhi, another of Morang
district’s rice farmers, admits he was sceptical. “Initially, I thought
to myself, if this is such a great idea why didn’t my ancestors think of
it? But I decided to take the chance and this is my third year using the
new method.” Majhi, who used to harvest five tonnes per hectare and is
now getting at least twice as much, has achieved this yield with only
one-third of the seed he used before, and with less water.
Local agriculture officer Rajendra Uprety first read about the technique
on the Internet and decided to try it. “Since 2002, we’ve achieved
double and triple harvests on test plots. It's just amazing.” He said.
News of the bumper harvests have spread quickly from Morang where about
100 farmers are now using the new method. Uprety, who brings farmers
from other districts on inspection visits, laughs, “Actually, it has
been more difficult convincing the agronomists and officials than the
farmers”.
Scientists remain sceptical
International scientists and agriculture research institutes have been
hard to convince too. Henri de Laulanié, a French Jesuit priest working
in Madagascar, devised the new method back in 1983, but it was only
after Norman Uphoff of the International Institute for Food, Agriculture
and Development at Cornell University in the US started pushing the idea
in 1997 that it was taken seriously.
Nevertheless SRI has been tried and tested by many thousands of farmers
in about 20 countries, from Cuba to China. Tens of thousands of farmers
have adopted the method in the few years since researchers introduced it
to Cambodia in 2001. And there, as in India, Laos, and Sri Lanka,
farmers are reporting that SRI means bigger harvests and better incomes,
for fewer seeds and less water.
But critics maintain that the scientific evidence for such claims is
lacking because most field trial results have not been recorded in
detail and published in peer-reviewed journals. When researchers at the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and colleagues tested SRI
in field trials in China, they found no difference in yield between SRI
and conventionally-grown rice. Their study, published in Field Crops
Research in March 2004, concluded that: "SRI has no major role in
improving rice production generally".
IRRI prefers high input agriculture
But perhaps IRRI has no interest in low input farmer friendly agriculture.
IRRI is the world’s leading international rice research and training
centre and describes itself as an “autonomous, nonprofit institution”
that is “focused on improving the well-being of present and future
generations of rice farmers and consumers, particularly those with low
incomes.” It is also part of the Consultative Group on International
Agricultural Research (CGIAR) an association of public and private donor
agencies that funds 16 international research centres.
Both IRRI and CGIAR have come under criticism for supporting a corporate
agenda, for example by breeding high yielding rice varieties, that have
caused the loss of over 100,000 local varieties, and that rely heavily
on chemical inputs and frequent irrigation. Indigenous varieties capable
of giving a higher yield were deliberately excluded from these programmes.
IRRI’s annual reports from 1963-1982 show grants from a whole array of
US and European chemical corporations including Monsanto, Shell
Chemical, Union Carbide Asia, Bayer Philippines, Eli Lily,
OccidentalChemical, Ciba Geigy (later part of Novartis Seeds which is
now part of Syngenta), Chevron Chemical, Upjohn, Hoechst, and Cyanamid
Far East.
While farmer dependency on expensive external inputs has increased
hugely, yields from Green Revolution cultivation are in wide decline or
are stagnating. Since 1990, the focus at IRRI has been on developing GM
rice, another technology aimed at making profit for agribusiness at the
expense of people and the environment.
At CGIAR’s Annual General Meeting in 2002 near the IRRI in the
Philippines, farmers protested calling for both institutions to be
dismantled. The protesters issued a statement saying “We believe that a
genuine, farmer-centred research institution should develop technologies
that shall liberate farmers from dependence on any agro-chemical TNC,
promote sustainable agriculture, conserve the environment, and protect
the health of farmers.”
Trainers spread the word
For Rajendra Uprety in Nepal, the results of SRI speak for themselves.
He points out that the technique’s success depends on skilful farming,
good timing, and careful planting and drainage. Since planting on
flooded paddy fields helped to control weeds, the drier SRI fields need
weeding several times during the growing season. But the benefits far
outweigh these obstacles, he says, adding that the main challenge is
training.
He has turned local farmers, like Kishore Luitel, now total converts,
into trainers. A few years ago, farmer Rajbansi thought Luitel had gone
mad for adopting the new technique. But earlier this year, Luitel was in
Rajbansi’s field teaching him how to plant his seedlings the new way,
with the tiny two-week-old seedlings individually placed 20 centimetres
apart in the sticky mud and not 10 centimetres apart in the slushy mud
as was usual.
Luitel points to his own field where rice now grows in thick tufts with
more than 80 shoots from one seed. “Using the old method, you plant
three or four seedlings in one spot and you only get about ten shoots
per seed,” he says.
For Uprety and Luitel, seeing is believing. They are convinced that no
part of Nepal need be short of food anymore if SRI is promoted
nationally. Every year, Nepal needs to produce more than 90 000 tonnes
of rice seeds. The SRI advocates say the method would save 80 000 tonnes
and harvests nationwide could be doubled.
Uprety sums it up: “Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest ones.”
The continuing spread of SRI and other appropriate farming technologies
in Africa and Asia via the internet, and by word of mouth gives hope to
many communities in the Third World. However, improvements to local
economies could have happened years ago if research institutes such as
IRRI and the CGIAR had really had the well being of present and future
generations of farmers at heart.
The Institute of Science in Society, PO Box 32097, London NW1 OXR
telephone: [44 20 8452 2729] [44 20 7272 5636]
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press-release@i-sis.org.uk - ISIS Director m.w.ho@i-sis.org.uk
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