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Progress and Activities

• World Vision/Sierra Leone sent one of its agricultural staff to Madagascar in November 2000 to learn about SRI from Association Tefy Saina (see Sierra Leone report in Sanya conference proceedings). Upon his return to Sierra Leone, he trained World Vision staff on SRI, and they in turn informed villagers about it. From among volunteer villages, eight were chosen for the first trials, with 20 farmers in each participating. The results were an average of 5.3 t/ha with SRI methods compared to 2.5 t/ha with their standard methods.

Since the initial evaluations in 2001 and 2002, World Vision has been expanding its dissemination of SRI, now with support from USAID. The February 6, 2004, edition of Reintegration, a publication of USAID, describes how farmers are getting 55-60 bushels of harvest from 6 kg of seed when planted and raised with SRI methods, starting with 10-day-old seedlings. Encouraged by positive farmer responses, other NGOs are taking up SRI dissemination in cooperation with World Vision and USAID.

Getting farmers to grow lowland rice rather than practice upland shifting cultivation has not been not easy, but the environmental damage to the uplands is affecting whole ecosystems and is important to stop, as well as to meet people's food security needs. Some SRI farmers are able to harvest 12 bushels of rice where they got 2 bushels before. Also, they are intensifying their production systems with vegetable rotations that improve the soil as well as diversity their diets.

Reports and Articles

• The Practice of the System of Rice Intensification in Sierra Leone, a country report by Abu Yamah (World Vision) presented at the International Conference "Assessments of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI)," Sanya, China, April 1-4, 2002.
• Lartigue, Laura. 2004. New Techniques Improve Rice Farming in Sierra Leone, Feb. 6 edition, Reintegration News Stories, USAID, Sierra Leone
  http://www.usaid.gov/sl/sl_reintegration/news/040206_sri/index.htm