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THIS column’s edition last Monday, titled “System of rice
intensification,” SRI for short, drew a reaction from no less than
Norman Uphoff, director of the International Institute for Food,
Agriculture and Development at Cornell University in Ithaca, New
York, from 1990 to 2005.
The Jesuit priest Henri de Laulanie in
Madagascar invented SRI in 1983. After observing and documenting how
it dramatically raised rice yields, Uphoff helped spread SRI to
other countries.
Attached to Uphoff’s e-mail was a report
showing how “Indonesia is progressing with SRI, and how far ahead
of the Philippines it is.”
Uphoff also reported that the government of
another country, India, has allocated $40 million under its National
Food Security Mission to extend SRI to five million hectares. In the
Indian state of Tamil Nadu alone the system of rice intensification
is being applied to 42,000 hectares.
SRI is not a novel idea in the Philippines.
Since 2004 the IT pioneer cum social activist Robert “Obet”
Verzola and others have been promoting its adoption, but they have
yet to attain the same level of success as their counterparts in
India, Indonesia and other countries. Philippine officials who
habitually claim to be committed to raising rice production have all
but ignored SRI.
Yudhoyono endorsement
In contrast, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
“has explicitly and personally endorsed SRI, and particularly its
‘organic’ version, because of its beneficial environmental
impacts over and above the contribution that SRI can make to
national rice self-sufficiency,” Uphoff said.
Readers with Internet access can watch a video
of the Indonesian president’s powerful endorsement of SRI (http://www.srivideo.zoomshare.com/).
Uphoff visited Indonesia last January 11 to 18
on the invitation of Shuichi Sato, head of the Nippon Koei
consultant team working with the Directorate-General of Water
Resources in Indonesia’s Department of Public Works in
implementing the Decentralized Irrigation System Improvement Project
(DISIMP) in Eastern Indonesia.
“DISIMP hosted the visit and arranged a very
good, full schedule, with one day each on the respective islands of
Lombok, Bali and Sumatra, and four days on the country’s central
island of Java—one day each in Jakarta, Bogor, Nagrak and Depok,”
Uphoff said.
I picked out the following points from
Uphoff’s summary of his observations, which could prove relevant
to our requirements in the Philippines:
“Results with SRI methods continue to be
impressive, as seen from the various reports [Uphoff] received
during the visit. The organizational support for SRI evaluation and
dissemination is greatly improving, but the main force behind the
spread of SRI is empirical. DISIMP’s report on nine seasons of
evaluation (2002-2006), with 12,133 on-farm comparison trials on
9,429 hectares, showed an average yield increase of 3.3 [tons per
hectare] with less seed, less water and lower cost…”
“Indonesia got an early start with SRI, having
confirming trial results already in 1999-2000. With further
confirmation, SRI methods were incorporated into the government’s
Integrated Crop Management (ICM) strategy for rice in 2002…”
“The biggest change since [Uphoff’s] visit
[to Indonesia] in September 2005 is in the official position of the
Government... Its president, Dr. S.B. Yudhoyono, has explicitly and
personally endorsed SRI, and particularly its ‘organic’ version,
because of its beneficial environmental impacts over and above the
contribution that SRI can make to national rice self-sufficiency.
The government department responsible for irrigation (PU) has taken
a strong position in favor of SRI uptake, and the Department of
Agriculture through its Directorate for Land and Water Management is
giving explicit and strategic support by training trainers...”
Private sector boost
“The biggest surprise on this visit was to see
how much support for SRI is coming from the private sector. I knew
about the leadership that the Japanese consulting firm Nippon Koei
Co. Ltd. is giving through the efforts of its DISIMP technical
assistance team leader, Shuichi Sato. I also knew something about
the fact (but not the scope) of support from MEDCO, a large
private-sector foundation that is helping finance Aliksa’s
training programs, and is also taking its own initiatives on behalf
of SRI. I was not aware of the assistance from a major tobacco
company that donated land for an SRI research center in Lombok and
is supporting demonstrations in East Java; or from the Microsoft
Foundation which will donate some computers and Internet linkages
for Aliksa’s centers in Nagrak and Depok.”
Uphoff concluded his summary with his sense of
the “democratizing resonance” within SRI.
Explained Uphoff: “When people realize the
boons that [SRI’s] principles and practices can confer, and see
how some of the tensions and exclusions created by resource-scarcity
could now be reduced by mobilizing certain processes and potentials
within the natural realm, this may have a benign effect on
people’s outlooks.”
dansoy26@yahoo.com
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