THE SYSTEM OF RICE INTENSIFICATION (SRI) Responses to Frequently Asked Questions Norman Uphoff SRI-Rice, Cornell University Published by Norman Uphoff, SRI-Rice, B75 Mann Library Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA First Edition: © Norman Uphoff 2015 ISBN: 13: 978-1515022053 Designed by Carrie Young Assistance from Devon Jenkins and Prabhat Gautam Supported by CreateSpace Publishers Distributed by Amazon.com, Inc. 2nd edition to be available in black and white i FOREWORD Compared to a decade ago, many more persons – at least 10 million people, most of them farmers -- can now answer the question "What is SRI?" at least in general terms. However, most would probably not give very detailed answers, and many would like to know more about this strategy for raising the crop yield of rice, and now also other grains, legumes and vegetables, just by changing the way that these crops are managed, with minimal reliance on purchased inputs. Also by now, many more persons will at least have heard something about SRI and about its benefits for producers, for consumers, and for the environment. They may well be interested in a systematic introduction to this phenomenon which has demonstrated positive results in more than 50 countries around the world (http://sri.cals.cornell.edu/countries/index.html). So this book is written for both groups of potential readers, bringing together in one place much of the accumulated field experience and scientific research that makes the System of Rice Intensification and its derivations grouped under the broad heading of the System of Crop Intensification an unprecedented opportunity for enabling people to improve their lives in this 21st century. Two publications in India previously assembled such information with primary reference to that country (Pandian et al. 2011; Thiyagarajan and Gujja 2012). This presentation complements those books, but can be read separately and is intended for a worldwide readership. It is organized to address in a simple, organized way any interests, curiosities and concerns that people may have about this phenomenon which is now widely known just as ‘SRI.’ What is referred to as 'modern agriculture' has been very productive and significant in the 20th century, but it is going to have to change considerably for the 21st century. Our land and water resources are diminishing in quantity, quality and reliability -- certainly in per-capita terms, but in many places also absolutely. With the added complications and compulsions of climate change, there is ever more reason to rethink and revise our agricultural practices, even practices that have served many if not all of the world's people reasonably well in the past. We face the triple imperative of ensuring food security for all of the households in our respective countries; raising our crop productivity so that food needs can be met with fewer rather than more of our resources; while maintaining the health- fulness of our food supply and the robustness and quality of our environment. We know that meeting these objectives will not solve all of the world's problems. But we also know that unless the essential requirement of food for everyone can be satisfied, resolving the many other major problems that now confront us will become much more difficult and surely much less likely. ii In this Foreword, not much needs to be written about SRI since this book addresses the subject systematically and reasonably thoroughly. The book starts out with a listing of frequently asked questions (FAQs) regarding SRI on pages 1-2, followed by short summary answers on pages 3-19, with the remainder of the book then providing more complete responses to each question, offering more extended explanations on pages 20-184. There will be necessarily a little overlap in some of the longer responses as each answer was constructed to be self-standing. However, the whole presentation is constructed in such a way as to provide readers with an efficient way to get a good understanding of SRI. Responses to the questions are like transects through the growing body of SRI knowledge and experience. Farmers' and Others' Contributions In this Foreword, I will comment briefly on two pictures that have shaped my own understanding of SRI. Each picture is worth more than the proverbial 'thousand words' because each makes the subject of SRI both vivid and concrete, combining both the human and the biological aspects of the SRI phenomenon. This book contains many pictures because SRI is such a visual subject, and I have learned almost as much from the pictures that I have received or taken as I have from others’ reports and from my own field visits. This book shares the most instructive pictures in my files as providing part of the answers to many questions. Below is seen Mey Som of Tropaing Raing village in Kandal province of Cambodia, who was the first farmer in his country to agree to use and evaluate SRI methods. In his hands he is holding two rice plants of the same variety. The plant in his left hand was grown with his former usual practices, while the one in his right hand he grew by using the new SRI methods. iii In 2000, 28 farmers including Mey Som tried out the proposed new methods on their own fields, having learned about SRI from CEDAC, the Cambodian Center for Study and Development of Agriculture, based in Phnom Penh. CEDAC’s director Dr. Y.S. Koma had tried the methods out on his own farm the previous year before recommending them. Within 15 years, over 200,000 Cambodian farmers were working with SRI concepts and methods. Because few of them have access to irrigation facilities, most farmers have developed unirrigated versions of SRI for rainfed production. Their yields have averaged 3.2 to 3.9 tons of paddy rice per hectare, which is 25 to 50% more than the national average of 2.6 tons. Mey Som's own yields have doubled, increasing from 1.75 tons per hectare to 3.5 tons with reduced use of agrochemicals and with lower costs of production. This has meant that his income like that of other SRI farmers has risen by more than the value of the increased grain that they produce using SRI’s alternative methods. As a kind of community service, Mey has visited dozens of villages in his district and beyond to share his SRI experiences with other farmers. As visual aids he carries contrasting rice plants like those shown in the picture. When he walks into a village, he engages farmers like himself in conversation, encouraging them to use SRI ideas and practices to benefit their families, their communities, and their environments just as he has done. This is an example of the way that SRI has proceeded with farmer buy-in and effort. While government agencies, NGOs and other organizations have all engaged in SRI extension efforts, an important factor in the spread of SRI has been this kind of farmer initiative. The picture at the top of the next page ‘speaks volumes’ about SRI. It was sent to me in 2003 by Dr. Rena Perez, who began supporting the evaluation and spread of SRI in Cuba as a volunteer SRI promotore there in 2000. This picture has helped me and subsequently thousands of others to understand better the phenomenon of SRI which I had first learned about in Madagascar some 10 years earlier. In 2002, Rena got Luis Romero, a Cuban farmer in San Antonio de los Baños, to try out SRI methods for himself. She knew him from her previous work as an advisor on animal nutrition in the Ministry of Sugar. He prepared a traditional nursery and when all of its seedlings were 9 days old, he took out some of them to plant in an experimental SRI plot. In Cuba, a common age for transplanting rice seedlings is 50-55 days after sowing, considerably later than anyone now advises. When Rena visited Luis 52 days after he had sown his nursery, he was starting to transplant his main field. She had a camera with her, so she took a picture to compare an SRI plant already growing in an SRI plot with a typical rice seedling being pulled up from Luis’ nursery. The plant on the right which had been transplanted as a young single seedling, widely spaced with organic matter iv added to the soil, and with some soil-aerating weeding, had become quite obviously much larger and more vigorous. It can be hard to believe that these two rice plants are the same variety (VN2084, locally known as Bollito) and the same age, both 52 days old. The plant on the left with only 5 tillers (stalks) and a meager root system was affected by the crowding and flooding of a conventional nursery. Its SRI 'twin sister' on the right has 43 tillers and a large, healthy root system, stimulated by having space and aeration. The same genotype produced quite different phenotypes. The differences were attributable simply to the modifications that Luis had made in his management of the rice plants. In his first season, Luis, seen on the left, got a yield of 14 tons per hectare from this SRI plot with good growing conditions. In a subsequent water-short season with late planting because of delayed rains, he got a yield of only 4.5 tons per hectare. But his neighbor's yield was just 3 tons when using conventional cultivation methods. The picture above of the contrasting tillering and root growth quickly became iconic for the whole SRI movement. It has been reproduced countless times around the world.