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A methodology that can raise rice yields by 100%, 200% or even 300% could be seen as a threat to farmers, increasing supply far beyond demand and thus lowering prices. In fact, it is better to consider SRI in terms of productivity rather than in terms of yield. The world does not need several times more rice. But it will benefit greatly from increases in the productivity of those factors of production devoted to rice cultivation, especially:

• Land,


• Labor,


• Water,
and

• Capital.

Little capital is needed since SRI does not require purchasing new seeds or agrochemical inputs -- only a rotating hoe which makes weeding more efficient and effective, as it contributes to soil aeration as well as the removal of weeds. A hoe costs between $10 and $20, a fraction of the value of additional rice that can be produced with SRI methods.

To the extent that SRI methods raise the productivity of land , labor and water, they will permit farmers to redeploy some of their land, labor and water from producing rice.

• Rice is never a well-remunerated crop, to producing other crops that are of higher value and of greater nutritional value, to contribute to better human health.

Some farmers may find SRI requiring enough additional labor that they cannot cultivate their whole rice area with these methods. In such a situation, these farmers would benefit more from cultivating as much of their rice area as they can with SRI methods of plant, soil, water and nutrient management because their returns to labor -- their main resource for supporting their household -- will be greater. Any land and water not used for rice could be used for producing other crops at other times when labor is not a constraint.

• The productivity of land with SRI can usually be increased by 50 to 100%.
  
• So although the labor inputs increase with SRI by 25 to 50%, with output being doubled the per-hour or per-day returns to labor go up by about 50%.
• Further, when only about half as much water is used per season following SRI water management methods, water productivity is increased by two to four times.

These increases all at the same time are made possible because of synergy among SRI practices, with each adding more to output when used with the other practices than when used by itself. The evidence is not yet conclusive but there are some data indicating that the methods used for managing plants, soil, water and nutrients enhance the biological activity of the soil so that nitrogen, abundantly available from the atmosphere, gets fixed biologically through microbial action to become available to rice plants. Also, different biological processes make other nutrients available to plants, e.g., through phosphorus solubilization. SRI give plants to access, through biological processes, large reserves of chemical resources otherwise unavailable.