The News:

The, a novel technique to give double yields in rice production using less water, is gaining acceptance in parts of India, making India the second in popularity of SRI after Cambodia. Owing to certain apprehensions, however, acceptability of the concept has been a bit slow here as per Norman T. Uphoff of Cornell University in the US. He is Hyderabad on October 7 2006 as guest of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture.

In Cambodia SRI became immensely popular and India too is said to have conducive environment for its dramatic growth. In Cambodia, it reportedly grew up from 28 farmers in 2000 to 55,000 this year.

How it works?

System of Rice Intensification, known as SRI is a “methodology for increasing the productivity of irrigated rice by changing the management of plants, soil, water and nutrients” says SRI’s official web site. It claims that these practices help ensure health of soil as well as plants, support greater root growth and nurtures soil microbes in abundance and diversity. It incorporates a number of agro-ecological principles with good scientific foundations as detailed below.

• Rice plant seedlings are transplanted very young usually just 8-12 days old, with just two small leaves, with due care for minimum trauma to the roots. Only one per seedling per hill instead of 3-4 together and with greater spacing to avoid root competition, encourage greater root and canopy growth
• Good quality and healthy soil is the key to best production. Soil is kept moist, instead of being flooded, but well-drained and aerated with good structure and enough organic matter to support increased biological activity.
• While a minimum of water is applied during the vegetative growth period, only a thin layer of water is maintained on the field during the flowering and grain filling stage. Alternatively, flooding and draining the fields in 3-5 day cycles is also followed with good results.
• Soil nutrients need augmented, preferably with compost, made from any available biomass. Better quality compost such as with manure can give additional yield advantages. Chemical fertilizer is discourages as it not good for active microbial growth. With SRI approach, build up of soil fertility is required over time, not much initially. Greater root exudation in SRI, enhances soil fertility too.
• In non-flooded fields, weeding is necessary at least once or twice, starting 10-12 days after transplanting, and preferably 3 or 4 times before the canopy closes. Rotary hoe, a simple, inexpensive, push-weeder device aerates the soil as well while weeds are eliminated. They are not removed but left in the soil to decompose and enhance fertility.
• Last but not least, to take local factors and farmer’s knowledge into account to evaluated field conditions and allow suitable variations.

So What to do Now?

A pioneer of SRI the world over, Prof. Uphoff suggests five things that the Governments could do to ramp up SRI and improve its acceptability among farmers. It is true not only for India but equally rlevent to other developing nations in tropics, where rice could be a major food crop. Prof. Uphoff himself said that rice is the food crop of future.

• The measures suggested include :
• Reliable supply of good and appropriate implements,
• Identification and honing of a few visible and well recognizable master farmers from among their community, who can pass on the methodology to others,
• Close scrutiny of water and soil biology,
• Formation of biomass and promotion of indigenous rice.

India’s national institutions and agriculture universities continue to resist SRI, steeped in a belief that only gene-centric approach enhances production of rice or for that matter any crop! Believe it, even some of Prof. Uphoff’s own colleagues at Cornell University are still not convinced of SRI! “Deeply entrenched conventional approach” of treating farmer as “a dumb person who requires the technology push, chemical fertilisers and pesticides, for higher yields” is difficult to remove from the Indian system. In contrast, based on SRI the yields reportedly have doubled or even trebled in places like China.

One more stumbling block to the growth of SRI is more labour requirements. However, the appreciable fact is in Madagascar, original home of SRI experiment, and in Cambodia the labour requirement was brought down to a mere 4 per cent within four years of switching to SRI whereas, in Tamil Nadu state of India, it dropped to just eight per cent after first year. Need to say more?