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Progress and Activities (1999-2007)
(for more recent news, see 2008 updates)

2007
SRI Results in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand States
• The People’s Science Institute, an NGO working in the mountainous states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in northern India and based in Dehra Doon, has conducted 30 capacity-building workshops on SRI cultivation during the year, with financial support from the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust (SRTT). Of the 1,000 farmers trained, about 600 took up SRI in 2007. While non-SRI yields were 2.8-2.9 tons per ha, their SRI yields reached 5.3-5.5 tons per ha (a 92% average yield increase) with reduced use of water and less cost of inputs (see report with yield data and pictures of PSI's work with SRI).

• SRI Applications Being Extended to Wheat, Sugar Cane, Mustard
Colleagues at People's Science Institute (PSI) based in Dehradun and working in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in northern India have completed the first trials that we know of applying SRI concepts to wheat production. These results were reported at the 2nd National SRI Symposium held October 3-5 in Agartala, Tripura State. With wheat, there is no change in management as large as moving from anaerobic to aerobic soil conditions with SRI. However, using two different varieties of wheat, PSI evaluators found that the best use of wider spacing and other SRI-inspired practices – together with direct seeding at fixed spacing – produced 28 to 40% more grain yield and 18% more straw yield -- compared to the best control results using standard broadcasting methods of crop establishment at the research farm at Dehradun (see tables presented at the Agartala symposium).

Next season, PSI will do further on-farm trials with ‘SWI,’ including use of seed drill and weeder within an SRI framework to reduce labor costs. These first trials showed that wheat plants respond similarly to rice plants when their growing environment is changed. This may encourage others to undertake similar kinds of experiments with other crops. Other Indian NGOs -- PRADAN in eastern India and Green Foundation in Karnataka – have already found that finger millet (ragi) responds favorably to SRI concepts and practices with much higher grain yield.

We now have an English summary of a booklet prepared in Telugu language by Mr. Alwara Swamy in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh state, on the methodology he developed called Sugarcane Renewed Intensification (SRI). This is being taken up by the AP state government, as reported in Update #8.

Shambu Prasad at the Xavier Institute of Management has sent a write-up on a System of Mustard Intensification (SMI) developed by Pravash Chandra Sathpathy, an elderly farmer in Mayurbhanj district of Orissa state.

We are looking forward to further extrapolations to other crops such as maize and sorghum. In Tamil Nadu state, Gopal Swaminathan has used SRI concepts for cotton, getting a 20% increase in yield, with lower production costs, even though cotton is not a gramineaceous plant species.

• TNAU Advertises SRI Benefits under World Bank Project
The Water Technology Centre of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore has advertised SRI methods -- being promoted under a World Bank-funded project in Tamil Nadu state (IAMWARM) -- in Tamil language in the newspaper, New Indian Express, December 28, 2007 (see newspaper promotion and English translation). A 114% increase in net profit per hectare is noted.

•Second SRI National Symposium Draws >250 Participants from 26 Sates or Territories to Tripura State Event
The Second National Symposium on SRI, hosted by the Government of Tripura with support from the World Wildlife Fund and other partners, was held October 3-5, 2007 at Agartala in Tripura, India. One indicator of the spread of interest in SRI is that this year's national symposium doubled the number of sponsors for the event. The State Government of Tripura, which hosted the event; the National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) based in Mumbai; the Central Rice Research Institute in Cuttack of the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives; and the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust of Mumbai, joined last year's co-sponsors: the Directorate of Rice Research (DRR) in Hyderabad of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research; the Directorate of Rice Development (DRD) in Patna of the Ministry of Food and Cooperatives; the Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU) of Andhra Pradesh State in Hyderabad; and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Dialogue on Food, Water and Environment.

Participants included researchers, extension personnel, farmers, NGO workers, government decision-makers and private sector. There were also international participants from 7 countries. A formal report will be posted on the symposium website (www.sri-india.net). A detailed report on the symposium by Norman Uphoff has been posted, which is linked to the powerpoint presentations made at the event. A separate listing of these presentations (with links to powerpoints) has also been posted.

• Regional Workshop on Organic SRI and Seed Exchange in Tamil Nadu
G. Moghanraj Yadav, managing trustee of VAANGHAI (Virtual Action on Agriculture by Nagurway Growing and Husbandry of Animals in India) in Tamil Nadu state, reports on an organic SRI rice production workshop (Uzhavar Mugham – 2007), conducted August 17, 2007 (see also article in The Hindu). The main objective of the Uzhavar Mugham, was to distribute pre-released rice varieties to a network farmers working with VAANGHAI for Multi-Location Trials (MLT) as part of a Farmer-to-Farmer Seed Movement. The program supports the cultivation of organic rice under SRI methodology to reduce the costs of cultivation, with minimal irrigation, improving productivity to enrich farmers’ lifestyle and income level. The workshop was attended by 150 farmers from various districts of Tamil Nadu state.

• Field Visits Document Reasons for Spread of SRI in Tripura State
The most rapid spread of SRI methods has been occurring in the state of Tripura, bordering Bangladesh and the state of Assam. In 2005, <1,000 farmers were using the methods, whereas in 2007, the number was >70,000 (see report of visit to Tripura in April 2007 by WWF-sponsored team). Following the 2nd National SRI Symposium which was hosted by the State Government of Tripura, Norman Uphoff spent four days visiting villages where farmers have taken up SRI to learn directly from them and the extension staff working with them about their experience. What he learned is now available in a trip report.

Orissa Workshop Results in Book Publication
Dr. Shambu Prasad has forwarded a copy of a new book that he edited together with Koen Beumer and Debasis Mohanty. The book, entitled Towards a Learning Alliance: SRI in Orissa, was released during the national symposium in Tripura and is an outcome of an ongoing learning alliance in Orissa that emerged out of a state level dialogue workshop on SRI held in June 2007. The workshop was held in Bhubaneswar with 82 participants from government, university, NGO and farmer sectors, as well as interested individuals, to share experience with SRI in Orissa state. A report on this workshop, cosponsored by the Orissa Department of Agriculture, the Xavier Institute of Management, the Centre for World Solidarity, Oxfam GB, and the Worldwide Fund for Nature, is also available. Once the organizers began putting the workshop together, it became apparent that there was much more SRI activity going on in this state than anyone had recognized. The workshop contributed to a 'learning alliance' that is described in Dr. Prasad's book.

• SRI in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha
Shambu Prasad has done an online search through the questions put to Ministers by MPs in parliamentary proceedings in New Delhi. The answers to these questions indicate that the Ministry of Agriculture has been giving support to SRI extension since 2004.

• Minister of Agriculture Endorses SRI in Parliament
Dr. Akhilesh Prasad Singh, in a written communication to the Rajya Sabha, has informed members of parliament that the ICAR has found SRI "effective in enhancing the production and productivity of rice in various parts of the country, including Andhra Pradesh."(see press release) This follows a recommendation from the Minister of Water Resources that SRI be used for its water-saving impact.

• The Tamil Nadu Department of Agriculture says that the 2006 samba paddy harvest will be a record-breaker, with average yields, having previously been 4.5 to 5 t/ha, reaching >6 t/ha. The department credits this in part to a new variety being popularized and to integrated pest management (IPM) strategies that reduce input use and costs while giving more crop protection; but it also credits SRI methods for helping raise production substantially, with an overall reduction in costs of production. See article in The Hindu, February 17, 2007.

2006 UPDATES
• PRADAN News
The Indian NGO known as PRADAN is working in marginalized rural communities, many with tribal populations, across the poverty belt of Eastern India: Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, West Bengal. Few of the households with which it works have access to irrigation facilities, so improving rainfed agricultural production is one of PRADAN's priorities. It began introducing SRI methods in Purulia district of West Bengal in 2003, and the number of SRI-using households has expanded to 6,500 in 2006, >1,100 of them in Purulia. The Purulia experience was evaluated by a research team from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) India Programme in 2004 (see paper #20 by Sinha and Talati in the IWMI-Tata Water Policy Report - series 2005).

PRADAN's report on SRI results in 2005 with 163 households documented an average yield of 7.7 t/ha. With a much larger number of households now using SRI methods in 2006, the average yield was still over 7 t/ha, as reported by the PRADAN team in Purulia (see 2006 report). Detailed data on 391 households which are using both SRI and conventional methods have also been provided. Since much of the worst poverty is to be found in rainfed areas, this performance is very encouraging -- similar to that reported by Kabir from Northern Myanmar (see Kabir thesis) and previously by the NGO known as BIND in the Philippines (see Gasparillo's report).

•An all-India symposium on SRI was convened in Hyderabad, November 17-18, at the Andhra Pradesh state agricultural university (ANGRAU). It was supported by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) with the co-sponsorship of ANGRAU and the Directorate of Rice Research (DRR) of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR). In addition to the invited papers, 61 posters were presented, ranging geographically from Jammu and Kashmir in the north to the Andaman Islands in the south. WASSAN has posted lead papers and abstracts on their website. A report by Norman Uphoff has additional details.

• The Second International Rice Congress was held in New Delhi, India, October 6-13, 2006. There were at least 15 posters on SRI evaluation and explanation, most contributed by Indian researchers (including Sridevi and Chellamuthu, 242 kb; Ramasamy et al, 898 kb) but posters came also from Bhutan, Nepal and Thailand (see details in Uphoff's IRC report).

•On June 29, 2006, the Acharya N. G. Rao Agricultural University (ANGRAU) serving the state of Andhra Pradesh hosted a multi-stakeholder review of different experiences with SRI in this state, attended by over 50 farmers and many researchers, extensionists and administrators from various organizations. There was much discussion, particularly on identifying and overcoming constraints for SRI adoption. The session lasted 10 hours as an indication of the high level of interest that the meeting generated. Dr. D Jagannadha Reddy noted that as of 2006, 100,000 acres of Andhra Pradesh land are using SRI. A report has been submitted by Kevin Fingerman, UC Berkeley PhD candidate, who attended the meeting as an observer.

2005
• In 2005, the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) sponsored an evaluation of SRI methods in 11 districts of Andhra Pradesh State of India, studying in detail the comparative results of SRI and standard modern methods of rice production for 212 farmers. The results, which included also soil biological assessments done by ICRISAT scientists, are reported in a WWF publication (pages 10-19).

• The Indian NGO PRADAN which introduced SRI methods in Purulia district in 2003 has sent a report on results from the 2005 season, with documentation from 163 farmers using SRI concepts and practices applied to rainfed rice production. Purulia is a very poor district inhabited mostly by tribal communities, with few irrigation facilities, so farmers are dependent on rainfall. The average yield with a rainfed version of SRI was 7.7 t/ha, which is 3.5 times higher than their usual average of 2.2 t/ha. Thanks to a private gift from Canada and a grant from the India IWMI program, PRADAN's efforts will be considerably expanded in the 2006 season.

SRI performance in the previous season (see 2004 data), has been evaluated by a research team from the India Program of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). That SRI use had gone from 4 farmers to 150 farmers within three seasons was what attracted IWMI's attention. This evaluation found that net income per hectare was raised 67% on average (even with one of the two villages studied having serious drought that year). Also very important was the calculation that with SRI methods, labor requirements per hectare were reduced by 8%. Labor-saving is very important for poor tribal households because they can use any labor saved for other income-producing activities to enhance their income. (see also IWMI report - download report #20)

1999-2004
• The first systematic work on SRI began at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, under the leadership of Dr. T. M. Thiyagarajan, at the time Director of its Center for Crop and Soil Management. He learned about SRI through the Dutch-funded water-saving rice production project managed by Wageningen University. TMT reported his first SRI results at a Wageningen project workshop in Nanjing, China, in April 2001. Over the next two years, Thiyagarajan's further demonstration of SRI results led the State government to provide $50,000 for SRI demonstration-trials in two major rice-growing regions of the state, one of them being Tamiraparani. In 2003, Thiyagajaran moved to Killikulam in the south of the state to become dean of TNAU's College of Agriculture there.

• Partly because India is such a large and heterogeneous country, it has been difficult to get SRI evaluations started, though SRI is now spreading more rapidly there than any other country, and with more high-level government support than elsewhere. Seminars given by N. Uphoff in New Delhi at the Ministry of Agriculture or Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) in September 2000, November 2002, and May 2003 did not elicit much activity, although one in September 2003 at the Water Technology Center of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) at Pusa seemed to evoke more interest. Since November 2003, SRI results coming in from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu States have now prompted Ministry and ICAR to take action on behalf of SRI, as noted below.

• In January 2003, Dr. A. Satyanarayana, the Director of Extension for Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU), visited Sri Lanka for week, arranged by CIIFAD and SRI colleagues in that country. Being impressed by what he learned from Sri Lankan farmers who are using SRI successfully, Satyanarayana upon his return to the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP) initiated demonstration-trials on farmers' fields in the summer (kharif) season of 2003, 300 in all, spread across the state's 22 districts. The average yields were over 8 t/ha, with some reaching over 15 t/ha. That this was done with less water (in a water-short state) and with lower costs of production made SRI quickly popular among farmers.

• In the winter (rabi) season of 2003-2004, about 2,500 farmers used the new methods, and average yields were around 10 t/ha. Researchers at several agricultural research stations confirmed what was being accomplished on farmers' fields. In the rabi season, one commercial farmer had a successful harvest (10 t/ha) from a 44-hectare field of SRI rice, using five different varieties and showing that the methods can be adapted for large-scale production. SRI is starting to spread very rapidly in Andhra Pradesh with the active support of the state's agricultural university and extension service. Dr. Satyanarayana has also been able to get central government interest and investment in SRI through his presentation of AP results.

• The Indian Potash Institute has begun demonstrating and promoting SRI, even though it can reduce demand for commercial fertilizer, and rice millers are also promoting it, because of increased milling output of rice from paddy, increasing from 67% to 75% due to fewer unfilled grains and fewer broken grains. (See section in 2004 trip report). The documented productivity gains from SRI reported effectively by Satyanarayana have persuaded the central Ministry of Agriculture and ICAR to fund over 3,000 SRI demonstration-trials across all of India in the coming summer (kharif) season.

• The M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) has taken an interest in SRI through its director. Dr. M. S. Swaminathan, known as the father of the Indian Green Revolution and former director-general of IRRI. He invited N. Uphoff to give presentation on SRI at the Foundation in May and December 2002, and MSSRF has done SRI trials and demonstrations at its Eco-Village Center in Pondicherry, with good results.

• Not far away, at Auroville, at the Annapurna Farm operated by the Auroville ashram, SRI had been tried for several prior to 2004, without getting any beneficial results, despite best efforts by Brooks Anderson and others. (see Auroville 2003 data). This has been, and continues to be, a puzzle. We suspect that there are some soil biological factors behind this, but these have not been identified. The soils are alkaline and of the type known in the area as 'dark cotton soils.'

• Farmer initiatives to try SRI methods and to improve them have been significant in India. The following are some examples of farmer leadership in innovation:
   - Selvam Ramasamy in the Cauvery Delta of Tamil Nadu, learned about them from the ILEIA article in 1999. He has developed a plant-establishment method of 'sowing' sprouted seedlings on a muddied field and then thinning the population by use of the rotating hoe at 10 days, creating a square grid pattern of plants after sowing. He has been promoting SRI through the organic farmers' organization in Tamil Nadu.
   - Gopal Swaminathan who also lives in the Cauvery Delta has developed what he calls the Kadiramangalam SRI method. In this system, transplanting is done in two stages: (a) at 14 days, the tiny seedlings are transplanted 4-5 per hill with 30x30 cm spacing, so that they are better protected from intense sun and dessication; (b) then at 30 days, they are carefully retransplanted, singly with 30x30 cm spacing. The additional labor required is remunerative because it gives 100% plant survival and an assured yield of 7.5 t/ha. Gopal has also developed a 4-row weeder that cuts labor time for weeding by 75%.
   - Narayana Reddy in Karnataka State has worked out a system for better water control with SRI, achieving a doubling of yield. He is a veteran of the organic agriculture movement in his state and has been providing leadership for SRI dissemination.

• A number of NGOs have taken up SRI in their respective programs, probably more than we have any knowledge of.
PRADAN is been introducing SRI in as many as 8 states. A 2004 report from Purulia shows the kind of response that farmers are getting from SRI methods. The Bharati Agro-Industrial Foundation (BAIF) is also working in many states of India, particularly among the poorest households in each area, and it started introducing SRI in 2004. In Kerala, the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farmers’ Science Centre) at Mitraniketan initiated the evaluation and promotion of SRI in fall 2004, with technical with guidance from Dr. T. M.Thiyagarajan of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. The SRI-adopting farmers harvested an average yield of 7 t/ha compared with the state average of 3 to 3.5 t/ha. By beginning of 2005, the KVK has trained about 1000 farmers and more than 500 extension workers from government, local bodies, NGOs, voluntary action groups, private agencies, etc. on SRI.