Revised proceedings - The System of Rice Intensification - Cornell ...

3.1 (b) Paper of Dr. Baharul Islam Majumder
System of Rice Intensification (SRI):
A Traditional Method of Rice Cultivation of India?
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Baharul Islam Majumder
Agricultural practices that were evolved over the many centuries before agricultural science was ascendant,
derived mostly from farmers‟ observations and experimentation. Much before there were agricultural
research programs, farmers selected superior crops, designed better cultivation methods, domesticated
animals, and found ways to make their farming systems more productive. However, after the establishment
of scientific research institutions, agricultural advancement was gradually taken out of the hands of farmers,
and they started looking to these institutions to fix their problems. While this evolution of scientific
leadership has contributed to substantial agricultural development the world over, farmers‟ experiments and
innovations have gotten less recognition and reporting. Sometimes, indeed, innovations made by farmers
have been appropriated by researchers and then handed back to them.
Rice, the world‟s most widely grown and eaten cereal crop, was domesticated as many as 11,000 years ago,
as seen from recent archaeological findings in China. Since then, farmers in many agro-climatic zones have
experimented with different varieties, have tried alternative methods of cultivation, and have disseminated
various practices. In spite of the fact that rice is cultivated under diverse agro-ecological conditions in about
110 countries, contemporary irrigated rice cultivation has become quite uniform with a standard set of
practices, viz., establishing a nursery, transplanting seedlings, applying nutrients to enhance soil fertility,
weeding, irrigation, and plant protection, with minor variations across regions.
The Green Revolution starting in the 1970s popularized the use of high- yielding varieties in order to rapidly
increase food grain production to meet the growing demand. But this came with a price – the sidelining of
traditional varieties, many of which had desirable characteristics, and greater reliance on chemical fertilizers.
Utilization of organic sources of plant nutrition was diminished, and farmers became increasingly dependent
on purchased inputs: seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, looking to formal research and extension services for
guidance. By the end of the 20th century, increasing awareness of the problems of environmental
degradation and of the dangers of over-use of chemicals in agriculture led to a revival of interest in organic
agricultural production to some extent. Simultaneously, industrial development, burgeoning populations, and
changing climatic conditions made it more necessary to use water economically when irrigating crops,
especially rice. These and other developments made it imperative for rice research to concentrate on resource
efficient production. The main avenues pursued included hybrid rice, new plant types, biotechnology
modifications, and water-saving technologies, etc.
Some of the new approaches have originated from outside the realm of formal research institutions, one
innovation being the increasingly popular System of Rice Intensification, known as SRI. This originated in
Madagascar in the 1980s through the observations and experimentation of Father Henry de Laulanié, and
subsequently it has been popularized by the sustained and committed efforts of Dr. Norman Uphoff and many
other scientists and civil- society leaders over the past decade. Today SRI methods have been validated in more
than three dozen countries, and they are spreading rapidly in countries that produce two-thirds of the world‟s
rice – China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Cambodia. In the last five years, SRI has become a dynamic
movement in India joined by farmers, civil society organizations, universities, research institutions, government
agencies, foundations and private sector.
SRI is quite different from the approach of the Green Revolution in that: a) it is not a seed-based approach, b)