Bring the elephant to the village
How to answer the partial adoption and dis-adoption problem of System of Rice Intensification
By Gurpreet Singh
Gregor Johann Mendel, the father of genetics, was an Austrian priest who discovered the basics of genetics in his backyard garden by studying the peas. He died in 1884 without knowing how his work will influence a field of science. On similar lines, Father Henri de Laulanie in Madagascar too could not see how his discovery will contribute to food security and well-being of several poor in developing countries. He tested and trialled a unique method of cultivating rice and challenged the existing traditional practice of rice cultivation. Thanks to Dr Norman Uphoff from Cornell University who put in a lot of effort to disseminate the method from Madagascar to the world. It is now widely adopted and celebrated by farmers across the globe.
The method is called System of Rice Intensification. In the traditional practice, rice farmers transfer 25-35 days old plant from nursery to the prepared plots filled with water. The farmers plant 3-6 plants per spot which leads to a high density of plants per unit area. SRI is unique as it promotes wide space (usually 25 cm) between plants over dense planting, wet and dry irrigation over flooding, and planting ‘single 12-15 days old’ plant. The idea here is to give enough space to single plant to grow and show its full potential to produce.
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| Source: SRI-RICE (see link) |
About 10 million farmers in over 55 countries across the globe have adopted and got benefitted from SRI. It increases productivity, i.e., per unit area production, and reduces the cost incurred in seeds, fertilisers, and irrigation. Farmers in different countries have reported an increase in well-being after adopting the method. Thanks to community-based organisations which were stakeholders in the dissemination of SRI. Other additional benefits associated with the method is that it reduces the release of harmful gas methane from rice field, which causes our planet to heat, a phenomenon also known as global warming.
There has been an ongoing discussion that if SRI is so good why there is partial-adoption or dis-adoption of the method, i.e., why many farmers stop practising or cultivate only a limited land with SRI? To find out the factors, which lead to the partial adoption or dis-adoption of the technique, a team of researcher comprising Dr Martin Noltze, Dr Matin Qaim, and Dr Stefan Schwarze from Georg-August-University of Goettingen Germany, studied 397 SRI farmers from Timor Leste a south-east Asian country.
The study engaged two staged econometric modelling on the data and showed that there are two telling factors which affects the farmers’ decision and behaviour towards SRI adoption. First, the characteristic of the cultivated plot like distance from home, slope of a plot, and soil type. Second, the training offered on SRI. The two factors are highly correlated with the adoption of the method. For example, a farmer is more likely to continue the method if he has land near to his home. Similarly, the farmers will be more proactive to adopt if the extension gives intense hand-holding support to the farmer.
As the characteristics of the plot such as the distance from home cannot be changed for farmers as they are static while the focus of the policymakers can be in moving the extension team which mostly in a developing country act like an elephant – large in size, hard to move. Farmers’ can be brought out of the adoption bottleneck by site-specific, i.e., training customised to farmers’ need at-least in the beginning. With plot characteristic varying from one farm to another the extension team needs to be flexible, innovative, and creative to involve farmer in the learning and method adoption process. A smart policy strategy can be to 'bring the elephant to the village.' I will go further to propose, let the extension worker be with the farmers during the rice cropping season and live the experience what affects them to adopt the technique and thus validate the factors. This will help not just research but also the dissemination of the practice.
The study limits its findings to the adoption of the technique and does not speak much about the claimed benefit of SRI. It also leaves the research community to further search for more factors affecting the adoption of the technique to strengthen the body of research and help policymakers. Nevertheless, the study helps to gauge in the reasoning of farmer's behaviour and contributes to 'technology adoption' research. It also guides extension workers to play a proactive role in promoting the technique.
Works Cited
Martin Noltze, S. S. (2012). Understanding the adoption of system technologies in smallholder agriculture: The system of rice intensification (SRI) in Timor Leste. Agriculture Systems, 64-73.
SRI-INRC. (2018, July 05). SRI International Network and Resources Center. Retrieved from Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences: http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/aboutsri/aboutus/index.html
1. Language was very lucid, comprehensible and engaging
ReplyDelete2. The beginning sets the stage right, informs about the topic with some background and makes one curious
3. The end talks about the limitations of the study but still acknowledges the importance of the work, a good way to end.
4. You also go beyond the study and propose your ideas which is very good according to me
5. The blog is largely understandable and clear but there were some minor things unclear to me as a lay person, such as 'wet & dry irrigation'. Overall, the second paragraph has some scope for more clarity because I am not from this field.
6. Another minor thing is the use of the word 'extension team'; this could have been further simplified by stating 'the team engaged in the extension of SRI'. I had to read the term twice to understand what it meant. It is simply because I am not from the field. It would have been obvious for anyone belonging to your field I think.
7. Overall, a very informative and well-written blog. I really had to look for negative things to point out and they were too few.