Subject: Amazing AGRIC RESULTS without ecological costs; READ BELOW
From: "Kathryn Johnson" <[email-masked]>
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Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2013 11:05:39 -0800

See below for a fascinating article, excerpt here:   Kathryn

"It is a set of ideas, the absolute opposite to the first green revolution
[of the 60s] which said that you had to change the genes and the soil
nutrients to improve yields. That came at a tremendous ecological cost,"
says Uphoff. "Agriculture in the 21st century must be practised differently.
Land and water resources are becoming scarcer, of poorer quality, or less
reliable. Climatic conditions are in many places more adverse. SRI offers
millions of disadvantaged households far better opportunities. Nobody is
benefiting from this except the farmers; there are no patents, royalties or
licensing fees."
Full article below, K

 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development> Guardian Global Development

India's rice revolution

In a village in India's poorest state, Bihar, farmers are growing world
record amounts of rice - with no GM, and no herbicide. Is this one solution
to world food shortages?
. India's rice revolution
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/audioslideshow/2013/feb/15/ind
ia-rice-revolution-audio-slideshow> - audio slideshow
.         
*	John Vidal <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/johnvidal>  in Bihar,
India <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/india>  
 
<http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/2/12/1360680
451579/Sumant-Kumar-001.jpg> Sumant KumarView larger picture
Sumant Kumar photographed in Darveshpura, Bihar, India. Photograph: Chiara
Goia for Observer Food Monthly
Sumant Kumar was overjoyed when he harvested his rice last year. There had
been good rains in his village of Darveshpura in north-east India
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/india>  and he knew he could improve on the
four or five tonnes per hectare that he usually managed. But every stalk he
cut on his paddy field near the bank of the Sakri river seemed to weigh
heavier than usual, every grain of rice was bigger and when his crop was
weighed on the old village scales, even Kumar was shocked.
This was not six or even 10 or 20 tonnes. Kumar, a shy young farmer in
Nalanda district of India's poorest state Bihar, had - using only farmyard
manure and without any herbicides - grown an astonishing 22.4 tonnes of rice
on one hectare of land. This was a world record and with rice the staple
food <http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/food>  of more than half the
world's population of seven billion, big news.
It beat not just the 19.4 tonnes achieved by the "father of rice", the
Chinese agricultural scientist Yuan  <http://enterprisechina.net/node/859>
Longping, but the World Bank-funded scientists at the International Rice
Research Institute <http://www.irri.org/>  in the Philippines, and anything
achieved by the biggest European and American seed and GM companies
<http://gu.com/p/3dgah/tw> . And it was not just Sumant Kumar. Krishna,
Nitish, Sanjay and Bijay, his friends and rivals in Darveshpura, all
recorded over 17 tonnes, and many others in the villages around claimed to
have more than doubled their usual yields.
The villagers, at the mercy of erratic weather and used to going without
food in bad years, celebrated. But the Bihar state agricultural universities
didn't believe them at first, while India's leading rice scientists muttered
about freak results. The Nalanda farmers were accused of cheating. Only when
the state's head of agriculture
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/agriculture> , a rice farmer himself,
came to the village with his own men and personally verified Sumant's crop,
was the record confirmed.
A tool used to harvest riceA tool used to harvest rice. Photograph: Chiara
Goia 
The rhythm of Nalanda village life was shattered. Here bullocks still pull
ploughs as they have always done, their dung is still dried on the walls of
houses and used to cook food. Electricity has still not reached most people.
Sumant became a local hero, mentioned in the Indian parliament and asked to
attend conferences. The state's chief minister came to Darveshpura to
congratulate him, and the village was rewarded with electric power, a bank
and a new concrete bridge.
That might have been the end of the story had Sumant's friend Nitish not
smashed the world record for growing potatoes six months later. Shortly
after Ravindra Kumar, a small farmer from a nearby Bihari village, broke the
Indian record for growing wheat. Darveshpura became known as India's
"miracle village", Nalanda became famous and teams of scientists,
development groups, farmers, civil servants and politicians all descended to
discover its secret.
When I meet the young farmers, all in their early 30s, they still seem
slightly dazed by their fame. They've become unlikely heroes in a state
where nearly half the families live below the Indian poverty line and 93% of
the 100 million population depend on growing rice and potatoes. Nitish Kumar
speaks quietly of his success and says he is determined to improve on the
record. "In previous years, farming has not been very profitable," he says.
"Now I realise that it can be. My whole life has changed. I can send my
children to school and spend more on health. My income has increased a lot."
What happened in Darveshpura has divided scientists and is exciting
governments and development experts. Tests on the soil show it is
particularly rich in silicon but the reason for the "super yields" is
entirely down to a method of growing crops called System of Rice (or root)
Intensification (SRI). It has dramatically increased yields with wheat,
potatoes, sugar cane, yams, tomatoes, garlic, aubergine and many other crops
and is being hailed as one of the most significant developments of the past
50 years for the world's 500 million small-scale farmers and the two billion
people who depend on them.
People work on a rice field in BiharPeople work on a rice field in Bihar.
Photograph: Chiara Goia 
Instead of planting three-week-old rice seedlings in clumps of three or four
in waterlogged fields, as rice farmers around the world traditionally do,
the Darveshpura farmers carefully nurture only half as many seeds, and then
transplant the young plants into fields, one by one, when much younger.
Additionally, they space them at 25cm intervals in a grid pattern, keep the
soil much drier and carefully weed around the plants to allow air to their
roots. The premise that "less is more" was taught by Rajiv Kumar, a young
Bihar state government extension worker who had been trained in turn by Anil
Verma of a small Indian NGO called Pran (Preservation and
Proliferation of Rural Resources and Nature), which has introduced the SRI
method to hundreds of villages in the past three years.
While the "green revolution" that averted Indian famine in the 1970s relied
on improved crop varieties, expensive pesticides and chemical fertilisers,
SRI appears to offer a long-term, sustainable future for no extra cost. With
more than one in seven of the global population going hungry and demand for
rice expected to outstrip supply within 20 years, it appears to offer real
hope. Even a 30% increase in the yields of the world's small farmers would
go a long way to alleviating poverty.
"Farmers use less seeds, less water and less chemicals but they get more
without having to invest more. This is revolutionary," said Dr Surendra
Chaurassa from Bihar's agriculture ministry <http://www.krishi.bih.nic.in/>
. "I did not believe it to start with, but now I think it can potentially
change the way everyone farms. I would want every state to promote it. If we
get 30-40% increase in yields, that is more than enough to recommend it."
The results in Bihar have exceeded Chaurassa's hopes. Sudama Mahto, an
agriculture officer in Nalanda, says a small investment in training a few
hundred people to teach SRI methods has resulted in a 45% increase in the
region's yields. Veerapandi Arumugam, the former agriculture minister of
Tamil Nadu state, hailed the system as "revolutionising" farming.
SRI's origins go back to the 1980s in Madagascar
<http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/aboutsri/origin/index.html>  where Henri de
Laulanie, a French Jesuit priest and agronomist, observed how villagers grew
rice in the uplands. He developed the method but it was an American,
professor Norman Uphoff, director of the International Institute for Food,
Agriculture and Development at Cornell University
<http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/> , who was largely responsible for spreading
the word about De Laulanie's work.
Given $15m by an anonymous billionaire to research sustainable development
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/sustainable-development> , Uphoff
went to Madagascar in 1983 and saw the success of SRI for himself: farmers
whose previous yields averaged two tonnes per hectare were harvesting eight
tonnes. In 1997 he started to actively promote SRI in Asia, where more than
600 million people are malnourished.
"It is a set of ideas, the absolute opposite to the first green revolution
[of the 60s] which said that you had to change the genes and the soil
nutrients to improve yields. That came at a tremendous ecological cost,"
says Uphoff. "Agriculture in the 21st century must be practised differently.
Land and water resources are becoming scarcer, of poorer quality, or less
reliable. Climatic conditions are in many places more adverse. SRI offers
millions of disadvantaged households far better opportunities. Nobody is
benefiting from this except the farmers; there are no patents, royalties or
licensing fees."
Rice seedsRice seeds. Photograph: Chiara Goia 
For 40 years now, says Uphoff, science has been obsessed with improving
seeds and using artificial fertilisers: "It's been genes, genes, genes.
There has never been talk of managing crops. Corporations say 'we will breed
you a better plant' and breeders work hard to get 5-10% increase in yields.
We have tried to make agriculture an industrial enterprise and have
forgotten its biological roots."
Not everyone agrees. Some scientists complain there is not enough
peer-reviewed evidence around SRI and that it is impossible to get such
returns. "SRI is a set of management practices and nothing else, many of
which have been known for a long time and are best recommended practice,"
says Achim Dobermann, deputy director for research at the International Rice
Research Institute. "Scientifically speaking I don't believe there is any
miracle. When people independently have evaluated SRI principles then the
result has usually been quite different from what has been reported on farm
evaluations conducted by NGOs and others who are promoting it. Most
scientists have had difficulty replicating the observations."
Dominic Glover, a British researcher working with Wageningen University in
the Netherlands, has spent years analysing the introduction of GM crops in
developing countries. He is now following how SRI is being adopted in India
and believes there has been a "turf war".
"There are experts in their fields defending their knowledge," he says. "But
in many areas, growers have tried SRI methods and abandoned them. People are
unwilling to investigate this. SRI is good for small farmers who rely on
their own families for labour, but not necessarily for larger operations.
Rather than any magical theory, it is good husbandry, skill and attention
which results in the super yields. Clearly in certain circumstances, it is
an efficient resource for farmers. But it is labour intensive and nobody has
come up with the technology to transplant single seedlings yet."
But some larger farmers in Bihar say it is not labour intensive and can
actually reduce time spent in fields. "When a farmer does SRI the first
time, yes it is more labour intensive," says Santosh Kumar, who grows 15
hectares of rice and vegetables in Nalanda. "Then it gets easier and new
innovations are taking place now."
In its early days, SRI was dismissed or vilified by donors and scientists
but in the past few years it has gained credibility. Uphoff estimates there
are now 4-5 million farmers using SRI worldwide, with governments in China,
India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam promoting it.
Sumant, Nitish and as many as 100,000 other SRI farmers in Bihar are now
preparing their next rice crop. It's back-breaking work transplanting the
young rice shoots from the nursery beds to the paddy fields but buoyed by
recognition and results, their confidence and optimism in the future is sky
high.
Last month Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jan/07/climate-change-poverty-inequ
ality> Stiglitz visited Nalanda district and recognised the potential of
this kind of organic farming, telling the villagers they were "better than
scientists". "It was amazing to see their success in organic farming," said
Stiglitz, who called for more research. "Agriculture scientists from across
the world should visit and learn and be inspired by them."
A man winnows rice in Satgharwa villageA man winnows rice in Satgharwa
village. Photograph: Chiara Goia 
Bihar, from being India's poorest state, is now at the centre of what is
being called a "new green grassroots revolution" with farming villages,
research groups and NGOs all beginning to experiment with different crops
using SRI. The state will invest $50m in SRI next year but western
governments and foundations are holding back, preferring to invest in
hi-tech research. The agronomist Anil Verma does not understand why: "The
farmers know SRI works, but help is needed to train them. We know it works
differently in different soils but the principles are solid," he says. "The
biggest problem we have is that people want to do it but we do not have
enough trainers.
"If any scientist or a company came up with a technology that almost
guaranteed a 50% increase in yields at no extra cost they would get a Nobel
prize. But when young Biharian farmers do that they get nothing. I only want
to see the poor farmers have enough to eat."

Kathryn E. Johnson
137 Terrace Ave
Kentfield, CA 94904
 
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