climate smart farming for the 21st century How a simple, ecological way to grow rice is changing the future of farming
Half of the world's 7 billion people eat rice as a daily staple, and more than 300 million smallholder farmers depend on its production for their livelihoods, yet conventional rice farming is one of the largest human drivers of global climate change, and the single largest use of freshwater resources on the planet.
Dependent on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, conventional rice farming can destroy soil health, pollute rivers, contaminate water resources, poison farming communities, and undermine ecological sustainability.
Consumer demand for rice, however, is rapidly growing, as urban populations in Africa and Latin America continue to prefer rice over other staple crops.
One thing is clear: without a better way of growing rice – and more of it – the threats to our climate, our health, and our planet will only grow more severe. Now, more than ever, we need a change.
In the early 1980's, a Jesuit priest and agronomist working in Madagascar stumbled across a radically different way to grow rice. Without flooded fields or chemical fertilizers, and with only 10% the number of plants normally used, Father Henri de Laulanié had discovered that rice plants grew far better, and gave higher yields, if managed in unorthodox ways.
Over the next 10 years, through his experiments in rural Madagascar he refined his techniques, and started calling it the System of Rice Intensification, or SRI. With SRI, farmers can use whatever variety of rice they prefer, and simply through different management the plants grow larger, healthier and stronger, making them more resistant to pests and diseases, and less vulnerable to severe weather and climate change.
By the late 1990's, word of SRI had started spreading beyond Madagascar, and soon farmers in China, Vietnam, Kenya, India, the Philippines and elsewhere were adopting the new practices.
By 2015, over 10 million smallholder rice farmers in 57 counties had adopted SRI, increasing rice yields by an extra 5 million tons per year and earning an additional $1.5 billion dollars, while saving over 1.25 trillion liters of fresh water per year.
Despite this success, SRI has yet to reach hundreds of millions of rice farmers. As a farmer-led innovation, SRI doesn't fit into conventional models of selling chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. Furthermore, like all agroecological approaches, SRI needs to be adapted to local conditions, requiring a more nuanced approach to how it spreads.
What's needed, are better tools to link farmers around the world, to share knowledge, adaptations, and innovations. Better tools and equipment to help farmers scale SRI up to more places and larger plots. All of this is within reach, but only with the right resources.
To learn more about how you can make this a reality, visit sririce.org.