STEPS Centre Seminar

'After the Green Revolution: Challenges for Agricultural Technology Development'
Professor Norman Uphoff
Friday 5 January 2007, IDS

Join the blog debate: Is it about time SRI was taken seriously?
Read Uphoff's presentation
Listen to Uphoff on SRI’s importance to the world food crisis
(audio clip, mp3 format, 387)
Listen to Uphoff on overcoming the sceptics
(audio clip, mp3 format, 641kb)

Seminar Report: Pro-Poor Rice Farming Method Faces Hostility

A new system of rice farming that is 'good for poverty, good for the environment and costs less' is facing 'antagonism, indifference and hostility' from the mainstream agricultural and scientific industry.

Farmers in Asia are experiencing 50 to 100 per cent increases in yields from the new system that costs less and can better withstand the environmental challenges of the twenty-first century – such as declining water and land supply and increasing energy costs and climate change.

But despite the potential of SRI (System of Rice Intensification) to revolutionise the lives of poorer farmers, its spread is being held back by lack of support from the agricultural mainstream, said Norman Uphoff, former director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development.

'That SRI did not emanate from the formal science system may be one reason for the hostility with which it has viewed by some rice scientists' said Uphoff, speaking at the inaugural STEPS Centre seminar. 'Scepticism I can understand, but we’ve had antagonism, indifference and hostility.'

However Uphoff is undeterred: 'For me the most important question is how we deal with hunger and poverty…I’ve heard myself described as evangelical (about SRI) and I plead guilty. There are possibilities here to feed the world that have not been realised.'

Uphoff is so convinced of the potential for SRI that he has left behind his roots as a pioneering political scientist to concentrate on investigating and promoting SRI as an alternative to current methods of farming that heavily on agrochemicals and fossil fuel.

The agricultural techniques and investment developed in the latter half of the twentieth century, widely known as ‘modern agriculture’ and culminating in the so-called Green Revolution, are inadequate for the twenty-first century, believes Uphoff.

Modern agriculture relies on mechanisation, chemicals, genetic modification and globalisation and has its limitations, not least because of its reliance on low-cost fuel to meet high-energy requirements, said Uphoff.

But he believes there are alternatives, such as SRI, better suited to today’s conditions of declining availability of land and water - and increased demand for both as populations rise – and the environmental extremes of climate change.

The benefits of these agroecological alternatives include: smaller-scale operations; energy saving and energy-efficiency; use of existing plant genome and biological processes; greater resistance to stress, such as drought, storms, pests and disease; use of organic material and methods; and emphasis on local production and consumption.

Together these methods contribute to an agricultural sector that is more productive and labour-saving while being less dependent on fossil fuels and agrochemicals. These methods are also kinder to the environment, more resilient to climate change, can operate without subsidisation and are accessible to poorer people, explains Uphoff.

Among the case studies that have inspired Uphoff to become a zealous proponent of SRI are the 412 SRI farmers in the Morang district of Nepal. The farmers gained an average 6.3 t/ha (tonne per hectare) yield from SRI methods compared with the control sample’s 3.1 t/ha. And with three weedings of the area, the yield climbed to 7.87 t/ha.

Twenty-seven countries are now using SRI methods – which forsake the traditional flooding of rice fields and crowded planting in favour of younger and wider-spaced seedlings and no flooding. Bhutan and Iran are the latest countries to begin SRI farming and the twenty-eighth, Burkina Faso, is not far behind.

And although Chinese scientists and the China National Rice Research Institute and are satisfied SRI works, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has yet to take up SRI.

'The IRRI is not receptive at all, it is not even looking at SRI,' said Uphoff. 'I think we’re a real threat to their current scientific and funding strategy.'

'We are not going to replace modern agriculture, because there is a lot of vested interest in it,' said Uphoff. 'But we have to shift the paradigm. We have to be empirical and explainable, because people’s lives are at stake.'

And SRI concepts and practices are now being extended to other crops, such as winter wheat in Poland, millet (ragi), sugar cane and cotton in India and even chickens in Cambodia.

Related Links

Find out more about SRI: http://ciifad.cornell.edu/sri

Find out more about the STEPS Centre: www.steps-centre.org

Notes

This event was the first in a series of seminars run by the new STEPS Centre.

Norman Uphoff is former director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development and has just been appointed professor emeritus at Cornell University. He is an expert in the politics of rural development and the administration of agricultural and rural development.

The STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) is a major new interdisciplinary global research and policy engagement hub combining development with science and technology studies. The Centre is a collaboration between the Institute of Development Studies and SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research) with a network of partners in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Find out more at:
www.steps-centre.org

For further information, please contact Julia Day, Communications Officer:
Tel: + 44 (0)1273 8876814 / Mob: + 44 (0) 7974 209148, or e-mail: j.day@ids.ac.uk

SRI farmer in Dong Tru village, Hanoi Province, Vietnam 2005 / Norman Uphoff

Norman Uphoff