Experiences of Farmers in India Experiences of Farmers in ... - AgSri

agencies to bring out similar farmers’ experiences from their regions, in order to
address some of the issues, bottlenecks and policy changes required to promote
SRI even more extensively.
Paddy cultivation is not the same in India after SRI. Farmers are trying,
experimenting and modifying the method to suit local conditions; it can be either
age of seedlings or the design of weeders. What is SRI and what is not SRI is not
important, what is more important is that SRI has changed the way farmers look
at the Rice plant. This is only the beginning. Millions of Indian farmers with this
knowledge and experience in SRI will not only change their practice of using the
resources but will force the establishment to invest in such methods that will lead to
achieving food security and promoting efficient use of land and water.
We thank all the farmers who have shared their experiences and those
people who have taken great effort to help us in collecting and compiling their case
studies, without which this book would not have been possible.
I would like to express my appreciation for Dr. N. Loganandhan, my colleague
who has undertaken this task of compiling the information as his first assignment
after joining the team at Hyderabad and other staff members for putting in long
hours.
We invite organizations and individuals to take time to compile such
information and put it on websites facilitating the flow of information. We hope
the farmers’ experiences presented in this book are going to inspire everyone,
particularly researchers to re-visit their own methods of evaluating agriculture in
general and SRI in particular.
Our suggestion to policy-makers is the same as the 100 year old grandmother
of SRI farmer Anil Changmai said: build more granaries to store the increased
production of paddy by adopting SRI. So instead of spending money on large and
expensive irrigation projects to divert water, we need to produce more rice with less
water. These farmers are showing the way.
Dr Biksham Gujja
Policy Advisor
WWF International, Switzerland
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