MORANG, NEPAL, July 21, 2005: It has been over 20 years since a French Jesuit named Fr. Henri de Laulanie discovered a new way of rice farming in Madagascar that increased yield while utilizing less seed. After the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development in the United States adopted the Jesuit’s methods and started promoting the new idea, the rest of the world has followed suit. In Nepal Rajendra Uprety, agriculture extension officer for Morang read about the technique on the internet. Uprety says, “Since 2002, we’ve achieved double and triple harvests on test plots. It’s just amazing.” Ananta Ram Majhi, a farmer in Morang, is totally convinced that this new way of rice farming is the way to go. Ananta Ram says, “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 the third year I’m using the new method. I used to harvest five tons per hectare in my fields, now I am getting at least 10 tons. I have achieved these yields with only one-third of the seeds I used before and with less water.”
The news release explains, “This is not a high-yield genetically engineered rice but the normal mansuli variety of local seed. Only the method of cultivation is different: instead of waiting six weeks, the seedlings are transplanted when they are only two weeks old. The field doesn’t have to be flooded, in fact it needs to be drained of excess water. The seeds are planted farther apart so that while a normal paddy field needs 50 kg of seed per hectare, the new method uses less than 10 kg. And the harvest? It is more than double.” Farmers in other parts of the world have also tried the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) as it is now called. Tamil Nadu, Hyderabad, Sri Lanka, China and Cambodia all boast increased yields with less seed with somewhat varying results. Tamil Nadu has increased rice production by 28% with 53% less water whereas Hyderabad farmers have reported double the harvest yield by using 85% less seed.
Uprety says that one drawback of the method is that the drier fields have to be weeded several times before harvesting. However Uprety finds that the benefits are so impressive. His biggest challenge is in training farmers. To solve this challenge Uprety has turned some SRI farmer converts into trainers. After 28-year-old Kishore Luitel trained his neighbor Dan Bahadur Rajbansi, both are convinced that if more farmers adopt SRI Nepal should not be short on food. The article does some projections, “Nepal needs 93,000 tons of rice seeds but with SRI it will save 80,000 tons and in addition, harvests nationwide could be doubled. Kathmandu Valley farmers presently grow 5.2 tons of rice per hectare, with SRI they could grow up to 12 tons, save most of their seeds and use less chemicals and water.”