EFFECT OF THE SYSTEM OF RICE INTENSIFICATION (SRI) ON ...

forced to sell labour in order to survive at this time of year. Husain et al. (2004) concluded from
trials with SRI in Bangladesh that only large farmers could increase their production of SRI without
any risks as they are not as vulnerable to changes and difficulties as small scale farmers. Larger
farmers would in this case be identified as farmers with higher incomes.
Richer farmers will in general have more time as they do not only rely on income from rice as
illustrated in figure 9. Farmers with lower incomes will have to use large percentages of their
available time on selling labour far away from their homestead thus having less time available to
take care of their rice fields. In terms of compost production larger farmers would most likely also
be able to produce larger amounts due more domestic animals.
All in all the target farmers seem to have adopted SRI now, at least for the moment. Before the
initiation of the project 50% of the households experienced some degrees of conflicts but after some
time the SRI fields showed strong growth and the conflicting counterparts in the households are
now satisfied and believes in SRI. Such scepticism is most likely found in many implementing
projects in the beginning. Presumably it relates to the type of paradigm used out of the three
described by Blaikie et al. (1997): Classic, Neo-Liberal and Neo populist.
Another sign of the success of SRI so far in the area is that farmers have spread the knowledge of
SRI to their neighbours, approximately 10 persons (+ -9) who did not attend any training with
CEDAC. Again it is a very high number and the fact that the author and CEDAC staff interviewed
the farmers might have affected them to respond in a more positive way than reality. The effect is
however very interesting. It is a so called “roll on” effect where practising SRI farmers will share
their techniques with other interested farmers (Kabir, 2006) and again these farmers will inspire
others to adopt SRI. The success of such a roll on effect will depend on the way a given system (in
this case SRI) has been introduced to the community – which is a different way of sharing
knowledge often practised by organizations introducing and bringing an idea to farmers (Kabir,
2006). CEDAC has introduced SRI to the farmers through SRI experiments, campaigns and leaflets
amongst others. Thus the interpretation is rather open and hence farmers will perform SRI as they
think it should be which by involving them in such a way must be considered more sustainable.
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