*[Enwl-eng] Indian Farmers Double Crop Yields without GMOs,Fertilizers
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Apr 17, 2013, 8:52:09 AM4/17/13
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*Miracle grow: Indian farmers smash crop yield records without GMOs*
By Tom Laskawy
Illustration Omitted:
A woman F. Fiondella / IRA, CCAFSGorita, Andhra Pradesh, India.
http://grist.org/food/miracle-grow-indian-farmers-smash-crop-yield-records-without-gmos/?utm_campaign=weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
What if the agricultural revolution has already happened and we didn't
realize it? Essentially, that's the idea in this report from the
Guardian about a group of poverty-stricken Indian rice and potato
farmers who harvested confirmed world-record yields of rice and
potatoes. Best of all: They did it completely sans-GMOs or even
chemicals of any kind.
[Sumant] 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
[~2.5 acres] of land. This was a world record and with rice the staple
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 Longping, but the World
Bank-funded scientists at the International Rice Research Institute in
the Philippines, and anything achieved by the biggest European and
American seed and GM companies. 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.
Another Bihar farmer broke India's wheat-growing record the same year.
They accomplished all this without GMOs or advanced seed hybrids,
artificial fertilizer or herbicide. Instead, they used a technique
called System of Rice [or root] Intensification (SRI). It's a technique
developed in Madagascar in the 1980s by a French Jesuit and then
identified and promulgated by Cornell political scientist and
international development specialist Norman Uphoff.
SRI for rice involves starting with fewer, more widely spaced plants;
using less water; actively aerating the soil; and applying lots of
organic fertilizer. According to Uphoff's SRI Institute website [PDF],
the farmers who use synthetic fertilizer with the technique get lower
yields than those who farm organically. How's that for pleasant irony?
Brothers Mohen Singh and Raj Narayin Singh in their wheat field in
Bihar. Petr Kosina / CIMMYTBrothers Mohen Singh and Raj Narayin Singh in
their wheat field in Bihar.
The breadth of the results in Bihar have gotten international attention.
The Guardian reports that economist Joseph Stieglitz, a Nobel laureate
and international development aficionado, visited the area last month.
After seeing their amazing results, he declared the farmers "better than
scientists."
High praise aside, the technique is not without its detractors. Most
western governments and agricultural scientists remain skeptical of the
practice: Many challenge that the reported yields aren't verified,
there's insufficient science behind the technique, and they worry it
can't scale to larger farms.
Achim Dobermann, deputy director of worldwide standard-bearers the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), dismissed the technique in
comments to the Guardian:
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
... 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.
Given the paucity --- or total absence --- of independent testing done
on GMOs and pesticides developed by companies like Monsanto and
Syngenta, it's galling to read of scientists complaining "there is not
enough peer-reviewed evidence around SRI" and that "it is impossible to
get such returns."
Here's where the potential conflicts of interest crop up: The IRRI is
currently involved in developing GMO rice as a core component of a
campaign to increase yields worldwide. This doesn't entirely invalidate
its position on SRI, but it points to the ideological divide in
agriculture between those who believe in technology as the only solution
to "feeding the world" and those who put faith in non-technological,
agro-ecological techniques to accomplish the same.
(It's also worth noting that the regions in India that invested heavily
in Monsanto's GMO RoundUp Ready cotton seeds are seeing yields collapse;
Monsanto blames the crop failure on farmers. Grist reported recently on
the even deeper tragedy many of these farmers are experiencing.)
Much of this divide comes from a belief among many scientists and most
western governments that the developing world must adopt western-style
industrial ag techniques in order to produce enough food. But that view
is a fantasy: Even today, as the Guardian article observes, 93 percent
of Bihar's 100 million residents are subsistence farmers.
It's delusional to expect that Bihar and the vast populations of Africa,
Indonesia, and China will transform into western-style economies with
western-style population distributions. Billions of people across the
globe will remain subsistence farmers far into the future; what they
require are farming techniques that can improve yields even modestly.
Forcing regions that don't have passable roads (much less
electrification) to rely on the grace of multinational organizations to
supply seeds, fertilizers, and chemicals seems borderline criminal.
SRI appears to offer an acceptable alternative for a variety of crops,
including rice, potatoes, wheat, corn, beans, eggplant, onions, carrots,
sugar cane, and even tomatoes.
For many westerners, including many western journalists, it's difficult
to separate the concept of "progress" from its inevitable modifier,
"technological." SRI may not be technology-based, but it's science-based
and sophisticated. It's also continually field tested and improved
through farmers' own feedback. It's exactly the kind of flexible,
responsive system you'd demand from any truly sustainable agriculture
--- as opposed to the regimented, top-down application of chemical- and
biotech-based approaches.
Plain old western snobbery shouldn't be discounted, either. As
agronomist Anil Verma put it in the Guardian article:
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.
Does SRI need more research? Absolutely. Can it be adapted to
large-scale monocrop agriculture? Probably not. But that's exactly the
kind of agriculture that's failing us and needs to be reassessed entirely.
Where does SRI go from here? In India, at least, Bihar alone is
investing $50 million in expanding adoption. However, the Guardian
reports that "Western governments and foundations are holding back,
preferring to invest in hi-tech research."
Meanwhile, Monsanto shows no signs of slowing down: Indications are that
it will win its patent case before the Supreme Court and gain virtual
total control of its seeds. This will enable it to continue charging
inflated prices for a technology that provides modest yield increases,
if any, and certainly nothing close to the 30-percent increase many
agronomists are praying for.
It's always possible we'll wake up to the successes being pioneered by
the unlikeliest of subjects --- subsistence farmers in the far east.
Until then, Monsanto's technology-driven vision of agriculture is
winning here in the west.
Tom Laskawy is a founder and executive director of the Food &
Environment Reporting Network and a contributing writer at Grist
covering food and agricultural policy. His writing has also appeared in
The American Prospect, Slate, The New York Times, and The New Republic.
Follow him on Twitter.
* * *
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/feb/16/india-rice-farmers-revolution?CMP=twt_gu
*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?
Illustration Omitted:
. India's rice revolution -- audio slideshow
John Vidal in Bihar, India
o The Observer, Saturday 16 February 2013 16.00 EST
Illustration Omitted:
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
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 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 Longping, but the World Bank-funded
scientists at the International Rice Research Institute in the
Philippines, and anything achieved by the biggest European and American
seed and GM companies. 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, a rice
farmer himself, came to the village with his own men and personally
verified Sumant's crop, was the record confirmed.
Illustration Omitted:
A tool used to harvest rice A 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.
Illustration Omitted:
People work on a rice field in Bihar People 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. "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 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,
who was largely responsible for spreading the word about De Laulanie's work.
Given $15m by an anonymous billionaire to research 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."
Illustration Omitted:
Rice seeds Rice 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 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."
Illustration Omitted:
A man winnows rice in Satgharwa village A 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."
*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational
purposes only. ***
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Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2013 4:16 AM
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By Tom Laskawy
Illustration Omitted:
A woman F. Fiondella / IRA, CCAFSGorita, Andhra Pradesh, India.
http://grist.org/food/miracle-grow-indian-farmers-smash-crop-yield-records-without-gmos/?utm_campaign=weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
What if the agricultural revolution has already happened and we didn't
realize it? Essentially, that's the idea in this report from the
Guardian about a group of poverty-stricken Indian rice and potato
farmers who harvested confirmed world-record yields of rice and
potatoes. Best of all: They did it completely sans-GMOs or even
chemicals of any kind.
[Sumant] 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
[~2.5 acres] of land. This was a world record and with rice the staple
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 Longping, but the World
Bank-funded scientists at the International Rice Research Institute in
the Philippines, and anything achieved by the biggest European and
American seed and GM companies. 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.
Another Bihar farmer broke India's wheat-growing record the same year.
They accomplished all this without GMOs or advanced seed hybrids,
artificial fertilizer or herbicide. Instead, they used a technique
called System of Rice [or root] Intensification (SRI). It's a technique
developed in Madagascar in the 1980s by a French Jesuit and then
identified and promulgated by Cornell political scientist and
international development specialist Norman Uphoff.
SRI for rice involves starting with fewer, more widely spaced plants;
using less water; actively aerating the soil; and applying lots of
organic fertilizer. According to Uphoff's SRI Institute website [PDF],
the farmers who use synthetic fertilizer with the technique get lower
yields than those who farm organically. How's that for pleasant irony?
Brothers Mohen Singh and Raj Narayin Singh in their wheat field in
Bihar. Petr Kosina / CIMMYTBrothers Mohen Singh and Raj Narayin Singh in
their wheat field in Bihar.
The breadth of the results in Bihar have gotten international attention.
The Guardian reports that economist Joseph Stieglitz, a Nobel laureate
and international development aficionado, visited the area last month.
After seeing their amazing results, he declared the farmers "better than
scientists."
High praise aside, the technique is not without its detractors. Most
western governments and agricultural scientists remain skeptical of the
practice: Many challenge that the reported yields aren't verified,
there's insufficient science behind the technique, and they worry it
can't scale to larger farms.
Achim Dobermann, deputy director of worldwide standard-bearers the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), dismissed the technique in
comments to the Guardian:
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
... 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.
Given the paucity --- or total absence --- of independent testing done
on GMOs and pesticides developed by companies like Monsanto and
Syngenta, it's galling to read of scientists complaining "there is not
enough peer-reviewed evidence around SRI" and that "it is impossible to
get such returns."
Here's where the potential conflicts of interest crop up: The IRRI is
currently involved in developing GMO rice as a core component of a
campaign to increase yields worldwide. This doesn't entirely invalidate
its position on SRI, but it points to the ideological divide in
agriculture between those who believe in technology as the only solution
to "feeding the world" and those who put faith in non-technological,
agro-ecological techniques to accomplish the same.
(It's also worth noting that the regions in India that invested heavily
in Monsanto's GMO RoundUp Ready cotton seeds are seeing yields collapse;
Monsanto blames the crop failure on farmers. Grist reported recently on
the even deeper tragedy many of these farmers are experiencing.)
Much of this divide comes from a belief among many scientists and most
western governments that the developing world must adopt western-style
industrial ag techniques in order to produce enough food. But that view
is a fantasy: Even today, as the Guardian article observes, 93 percent
of Bihar's 100 million residents are subsistence farmers.
It's delusional to expect that Bihar and the vast populations of Africa,
Indonesia, and China will transform into western-style economies with
western-style population distributions. Billions of people across the
globe will remain subsistence farmers far into the future; what they
require are farming techniques that can improve yields even modestly.
Forcing regions that don't have passable roads (much less
electrification) to rely on the grace of multinational organizations to
supply seeds, fertilizers, and chemicals seems borderline criminal.
SRI appears to offer an acceptable alternative for a variety of crops,
including rice, potatoes, wheat, corn, beans, eggplant, onions, carrots,
sugar cane, and even tomatoes.
For many westerners, including many western journalists, it's difficult
to separate the concept of "progress" from its inevitable modifier,
"technological." SRI may not be technology-based, but it's science-based
and sophisticated. It's also continually field tested and improved
through farmers' own feedback. It's exactly the kind of flexible,
responsive system you'd demand from any truly sustainable agriculture
--- as opposed to the regimented, top-down application of chemical- and
biotech-based approaches.
Plain old western snobbery shouldn't be discounted, either. As
agronomist Anil Verma put it in the Guardian article:
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.
Does SRI need more research? Absolutely. Can it be adapted to
large-scale monocrop agriculture? Probably not. But that's exactly the
kind of agriculture that's failing us and needs to be reassessed entirely.
Where does SRI go from here? In India, at least, Bihar alone is
investing $50 million in expanding adoption. However, the Guardian
reports that "Western governments and foundations are holding back,
preferring to invest in hi-tech research."
Meanwhile, Monsanto shows no signs of slowing down: Indications are that
it will win its patent case before the Supreme Court and gain virtual
total control of its seeds. This will enable it to continue charging
inflated prices for a technology that provides modest yield increases,
if any, and certainly nothing close to the 30-percent increase many
agronomists are praying for.
It's always possible we'll wake up to the successes being pioneered by
the unlikeliest of subjects --- subsistence farmers in the far east.
Until then, Monsanto's technology-driven vision of agriculture is
winning here in the west.
Tom Laskawy is a founder and executive director of the Food &
Environment Reporting Network and a contributing writer at Grist
covering food and agricultural policy. His writing has also appeared in
The American Prospect, Slate, The New York Times, and The New Republic.
Follow him on Twitter.
* * *
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/feb/16/india-rice-farmers-revolution?CMP=twt_gu
*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?
Illustration Omitted:
. India's rice revolution -- audio slideshow
John Vidal in Bihar, India
o The Observer, Saturday 16 February 2013 16.00 EST
Illustration Omitted:
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
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 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 Longping, but the World Bank-funded
scientists at the International Rice Research Institute in the
Philippines, and anything achieved by the biggest European and American
seed and GM companies. 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, a rice
farmer himself, came to the village with his own men and personally
verified Sumant's crop, was the record confirmed.
Illustration Omitted:
A tool used to harvest rice A 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.
Illustration Omitted:
People work on a rice field in Bihar People 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. "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 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,
who was largely responsible for spreading the word about De Laulanie's work.
Given $15m by an anonymous billionaire to research 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."
Illustration Omitted:
Rice seeds Rice 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 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."
Illustration Omitted:
A man winnows rice in Satgharwa village A 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."
*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational
purposes only. ***
From: "Yahoo Newsgroups" <vasi...@ramapo.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2013 4:16 AM
Subject: News: Indian Farmers Double Crop Yields without GMOs, Fertilizers
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