An adventure in applied science - IRRI books - International Rice ...

Early research and training results 137found that, by and large, owners operating their farms tended to do better thantenant farmers operating on a 50-50 division with their landlords.Barker also made a study of Rizal Province, where IR8 was being plantedextensively. The harvests of 200 farmers planting IR8 in the 1967 dry seasonwere compared with those of 127 who planted Binato, a tall, leafy varietyintroduced from Thailand. The group planting IR8 obtained an average yieldof 5,852 kg/ha; the group growing Binato had 3,165 kg/ha. Although thefarmers who grew IR8 spent more on inputs, they showed a net profit of P1,615, –compared with – P921 for the Binato growers. The area planted on each farmwas about the same (0.64 ha) for the two groups.A third study was made in Laguna Province. A group of 155 predominantlytenant-operated farms was surveyed. The farms had been visited earlier instudies conducted by the College of Agriculture and previous records ofperformance were available. Barker divided the farmers into three groups —adopters of IR8, nonadopters, and partial adopters.Except for one season, when typhoons severely damaged the rice crop, theresults obtained were similar to those of the other surveys, with IR8 producinghigher yields than local varieties and at greater costs of inputs. Laguna farmerswere disappointed in the low price they received for IR8, for the millersdiscounted it because of low grain quality. Nevertheless, most farmers whohad adopted the variety did so because they expected higher yields and,having achieved that, said they would rather wait for the next improvedvariety than return to the traditional varieties and cultural practices.The described surveys were mainly on irrigated farms. That the modernvarieties became fully acceptable to farmers in the Philippines is evident, fortoday essentially 100% of the rice area with controlled water supply is plantedto modem varieties (though IR8 itself is no longer popular in the Philippines).Barker made a study of the optimum economic level of nitrogen application,based on fertilizer experiments by IRRI’s Agronomy Department both in LosBaños and at the Maligaya Rice Research and Training Center in CentralLuzon. He set the arbitrary dividing line between profitable and unprofitableat a benefit-cost ratio of 2.5:l. He then determined where the cutoff point forIR8 and for local varieties would be if nitrogen from 0 to 120 kg/ha wereapplied at 30-kg increments. He concluded from the studies that in the wetseason, the optimum dose of nitrogen would be 60 kg/ha, but in the dryseason, 120 kg/ha could be applied with a comfortable profit margin. Asexpected, the tall tropical varieties did not respond profitably to more than 30kg/ha in the dry season and usually gave the highest profit during the wetseason when no fertilizer was applied.Another project that Barker undertook in 1966-67 was to study the economicrelationships between rice yield and such cultural practices as land preparationand weeding. The general conclusions were that under the conditions onIRRI’s experimental farm, yields did not increase above a certain minimum ofland preparation, which was three passes with a carabao and comb harrow orone pass with a harrow drawn by a 6-hp 2-wheeled tractor. However, he foundthat the better the land preparation, the fewer the weeds that had to be