A Wikiblog E-Book by Norman Uphoff with many others
Chapter 16: APPLICATIONS OF SRI IDEAS AND METHODS
IN AREAS OF DISRUPTED AGRICULTURE
One of the things that made SRI most attractive when I first learned about it in 1993 in Madagascar was the prospect that this innovation did not require farmers to procure new seeds, inorganic fertilizers, or agrochemicals. Rather it sought to enable farmers to make most productive use of the resources that they had. This would make SRI more accessible to poor, often isolated households, families that did not have the financial means or the proximity to commercial supply centers to take advantage of the input-dependent Green Revolution technologies being promoted by most governments.
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Beyond this, it could make SRI more appropriate for dealing with hunger and poverty in parts of the world where there were or had recently been conflicts or disasters that impeded the logistics for supplying agricultural inputs, particularly the seeds of ‘improved’ varieties and chemical fertilizer. Input-dependent technologies can become immobilized wherever input-supply systems become disorganized or disrupted in zones of conflict or contagious disease or in post-conflict situations.
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This advantage would apply also where natural disasters, not just man-made calamities, have damaged infrastructure and disorganized markets. That SRI’s effectiveness did not depend upon the purchase and use of external inputs to achieve higher outputs was an attractive feature of this innovation. This has been seen a large number and variety of countries as reviewed here.
SIERRA LEONE
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The first report on this advantage of SRI came from this West African country where the NGO World Vision with USAID funding had introduced SRI in rural areas ravaged by more than a decade of civil war, plunder, and ransacking. How World Vision got started with SRI in Sierra Leone is recounted in Chapter 44, itself a story of serendipity that started in 2001.[1]
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A 2004 report in the USAID/Sierra Leone magazine, Reconstruction and Reintegration, described how villagers who had been getting yields of 2 bushels with their traditional broadcasting methods for crop establishment were now getting 12-bushel yields with SRI transplanting methods.[2] Even if the average increase with SRI cropping was only half this much, this was an increment of great valued because the civil war which ended in 2002 had so badly disrupted agricultural production for a decade. SRI was thus a very appropriate methodology for restoring the diminished food supply in this war-torn country, as subsequently seen also in other parts of the world.
NEPAL
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A different demonstration of SRI’s suitability for conflict situations was seen here where Maoist insurgents waged a decade-long battle against the government. I visited Nepal in November 2006 shortly after a cease-fire had been agreed to by the contending forces. Rajendra Uprety, the government extension officer who played a leading role in introducing SRI in this country (Chapter 42), hosted my visit to Morang district. He drove me past the camp of Maoist insurgents where rebel troops had been gathered to surrender their arms and await demobilization, quite an experience.
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A few months previously, Rajendra had presented a paper to an international conference in Australia explaining how he had been able to carry out his SRI promotion work even during the height of the fighting, when the rebels had effectively shut down all government activity in rural areas of Morang, except for the SRI extension efforts:
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… Maoists restricted Government vehicles from plying the roads to villages (outside the district headquarters), which greatly curtailed [our] movement for training. We communicated this problem to farmers [who were asking for SRI training], and because the farmers wanted to learn SRI methods (at any cost), they contacted local Maoist leaders and requested that technicians' mobility not be interfered with.
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Once recognizing the importance of SRI and the demand of its methods from poor and marginal farmers, the Maoists became more supportive toward our project activities. But they still restricted the mobility of government vehicles, which were essential to our work. [So] to reach large areas, again farmers talked about this matter with the rebels, who agreed to allow motorcycles with private number plates (red color plates with white numbers) to travel freely. The colors of [our] project motorcycle number plates were changed, and staff started visiting farmers' fields to give SRI training.[3]
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Once armed hostilities ceased, it was easier and safer for Rajendra and other SRI trainers to move about, but their extension work had not been halted by the rebel activities that immobilized most development work in the region because local farmers interceded to keep the SRI work on-going.[4]
MYANMAR
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When the Metta Development Foundation started its work with SRI in 2001 in the northeastern Kachin and Shan states on the border with China, there was lingering tension and distrust between the indigenous ethnic-minority communities and the military government after more than three decades of armed conflict in the northeast. A formal cessation of hostilities in 1994 had not quenched the desire among local communities, heavily Christian, to gain autonomy from the rest of this predominantly Buddhist country.
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Thus, the Metta Foundation and its staff had to work very circumspectly with the local communities, which the government suspected of supporting separatism. Metta’s founder and director Seng-Raw Lahpi and the agricultural advisor whom she hired, Humayun Kabir, had continually to satisfy military authorities that they were not advancing separatist goals, and to persuade the communities that they were not agents of the government. Despite the tensions, Metta’s efforts were very successful, using farmer field school methods to introduce SRI and gaining respect from all parties.[5]
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In late 2018, it was gratifying to learn that a consortium of international donor agencies was supporting a front-line program, Tat Lan, to assist communities and households in strife-torn Rakine province along Myanmar’s northwestern border with Bangladesh. The government’s armed forces were in conflict there with small bands of secessionists who wanted separation of the Muslim population in Rakhine from the rest of the country’s Buddhist majority. Hundreds of thousands of non-combatant families had been forced to flee to Bangladesh for safety, leaving behind still more families who were displaced within their own area or living in a state of insecurity.
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This conflict, which evoked many charges of genocide, attracted worldwide attention. That SRI could produce quick benefits for vulnerable, resource-limited households in a disrupted situation was reported as a great advantage.[6] Below is a picture provided by the Tat Lan program of Rakhine farmers harvesting SRI rice which was giving them much increased yields.
SRI LANKA
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It was noted in Chapter 2 how in 2006, a Sinhalese farmer-trainer W.M. Premarathna carried out SRI training on behalf of Oxfam Australia for Tamil farmers in the Batticaloa district of this country. Prema’s SRI training was conducted literally ‘behind the lines’ of armed conflict between government forces and LTTE insurgents.[7]
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SRI extension work was the only relief activity of Oxfam Australia that the ‘Tamil Tiger’ authorities in Batticaloa district were willing to permit while the guerilla war was going on. As in Nepal, farmers supported the SRI training effort and got the combatants to permit the training to go on despite the conflict.
MALI
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Also reported in Chapter 2 was how SRI trainers in a contested area were able to carry on their SRI instruction and evaluations in 2012-13 despite efforts by jihadist forces to shut down all unapproved activities in the Timbuktu area. Hamidou Guindo and his small team were forced to stop their SRI work around Timbuktu when the area was occupied by extremist forces there. But with some support from the Ithaca-based NGO SRI Global, they were able to relocate and resume their SRI activities around Douentza, a town in Mopti region south of Timbuktu. Here is a brief report on their experience:
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It all became more complicated in early September, when well-armed jihadists occupied the town of Douentza. Suddenly there were roadblocks everywhere. The schools were shut down; men were forbidden to shave. Everyone found with a laptop or computer came under suspicion. To get around without arousing suspicion, Guindo and his team let their beards grow and dressed in the simple, worn clothing of village farmers. They quickly learned how to speak and act so as not to antagonize the occupiers and were able to finish their work unharmed. And the results were worth it. [8]
In that season, 70 farmers in seven villages around Douentza had average SRI yields of 8 tonnes per hectare, almost twice their usual average of 4.3 tonnes. Below is a picture of Hamidou (on left) and a Malian farmer making measurements of yield to have accurate data on trial results to report to farmers in the area and to SRI-Global in Ithaca.
INDONESIA
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In this country, for three decades farmers along the northern coast of Aceh province had their agricultural activities disrupted by conflicts between the secessionist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Indonesian government’s military forces. Life there became even more difficult in December 2004 when Aceh’s coastal areas were trashed by a huge that inundated and battered coastal areas of the Indian Ocean from South to Southeast Asia.
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Following this natural disaster, the Czech Republic branch of the Catholic NGO CARITAS introduced SRI methods amidst the twin afflictions of military conflict and natural devastation, with gratifying results. As noted in Chapter 10, Aceh farmers’ usual paddy yields had been around 2 tonnes per hectare. SRI practices, not dependent on external inputs which were difficult to get in this war-torn and wave-torn area, made it possible for Aceh farmers to achieve average yields of 8.5 tonnes in their first season with the new methods. This quadrupling of production mirrored what had been observed around Ranomafana in Madagascar in the mid-90s.[9]
AFGHANISTAN
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In Chapter 2, there was a picture of an SRI trainer from the Aga Khan Foundation being escorted to an SRI field demonstration in Baghlan district by a farmer carrying an AK47assault rifle. Some of the most difficult SRI work has been done in Afghanistan under war-constrained conditions, with good results.[10]
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As the security situation deteriorated in the district, the Foundation eventually had to withdraw its staff. But enough of a record of success with SRI and SWI methods had been established so that it was possible to incorporate promotion of these practices into an FAO program that operated in many other districts while this country was still riven by conflict.
IRAQ
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There was a picture in Chapter 1 of SRI trial plots sent from the Al-Mishkhab rice research station near Najaf in the southern part of this country which has been beset by warfare for many years. How SRI got started in Iraq by a senior researcher at this station and has gained a solid base is discussed in Chapter 43.
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The region around Al-Mishkhab was not been a center for armed conflict, but in 2003 the station’s library was burned down by insurgents. Despite the turbulent conditions in his country, Khidhir Abhas Hameed, who led the initiative for SRI testing and extension in Iraq, carried on his work with SRI ideas and practices, also publishing a number of research papers on SRI validation and evaluation.[11] In 2020, he reported that there was SRI activity in three provinces despite the continuing conflict.
TIMOR LESTE
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In post-conflict East Timor, SRI was introduced through the initiative of a German GIZ colleague, Georg Deichert, who had already helped to introduce SRI in Cambodia and then gave SRI a boost in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam when re-posted there (Chapter 25).[12] The GIZ effort in Timor Leste was complemented by an initiative of Oxfam New Zealand, which worked with a farmers’ cooperative federation that amalgamated 11 cooperatives operating in three districts and which also helped to spread SRI knowledge.
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An Oxfam New Zealand evaluation reported average yield increases of 70% with SRI, while water requirements were reduced by 50%. Farmers’ costs of production increased by 33%, from US$ 640 to US$ 850 per hectare because of the intensified management, but their net profitability per hectare was more than tripled, increasing from US$ 595 to US$ 2198.[13]
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This country was the first to be created in the 21st century, after a 27-year armed campaign for independence from Indonesia, and it remains one of the poorest nations in the world, with very limited functioning infrastructure. It was gratifying to the international SRI community when in 2010 Indonesian SRI colleagues provided training to Timorese farmers and technicians at the Nagrak training center in West Java.
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Later that year, the coordinator of the Indonesian Association for SRI (Ina-SRI) participated in a national SRI workshop in Timor Leste. Below we see Iswandi Anas standing on the left with three Timorese farmers (who introduced themselves to him as “SRI militants”) standing together with four government extension and donor-agency staff on the right.
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
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In the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there has been conflict over land use between the local Pygmy and Bantu populations, the Italian NGO Mazao has been working with both communities. The Congolese Provincial Minister for Social Affairs has commended Mazao for bringing the more reclusive Pygmy residents into its Agro-Ecological Rice Supply Chain Programme which is promoting SRI use for both economic and environmental reasons. The first-year trial/demonstration area was 18 hectares, with over half of the 3,160 program participants coming from the Pygmy population. The program has as one of its objectives the promotion of peaceful relations between the two ethnic groups.[14]
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Because SRI is based on knowledge and skill rather than on material inputs, it lends itself to dissemination and use where either man-made or natural conditions have disrupted logistical networks. During the height of the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa in 2014, SRI promoters in Sierra Leone and Liberia, Gerald Aruna and Robert Bimba, respectively, continued their NGOs’ SRI training efforts in these countries while also working to curb the spread of this terrible disease in rural areas. A picture from one of the Ebola-control sessions in Sierra Leone is shown below.
An advantage of an agricultural innovation that does not depend on specific inputs is that it can be disseminated wherever there are some knowledgeable people who are willing and able to venture into contested or afflicted areas, and where farmers are ready to learn how to get more productivity from the resources that they have at hand.
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In January 2017, with Japanese funding, the Community of Hope Agriculture Project (CHAP) which Robert Bimba heads in Liberia launched a two-year SRI training program to help achieve economic recovery of Liberian farmers in five Ebola-affected counties of that country. He has also reported in 2020 that SRI farmers were cooperating with CHAP in trying to help stem the spread of Covid-19. SRI farmers drew explicit comparisons between the SRI principles they had learned and the instructions for Covid-19 containment.[15]
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In 2017-18, conflict broke out in English-speaking areas of western Cameroon, with demands from Anglophone sections of the country for autonomy from the Francophone- majority government. Army troops were deployed in these areas against the Ambazonian Defense Forces that were fighting for separation from Francophone areas, with considerable suppression of communities in the Anglophone region.
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Farmer groups in both the Ndop and Mbueni areas where SRI was starting to spread have reported that their work has continued in spite of the disruption and difficulties that the conflict caused for the local population.[16] Below is a picture sent from Mbueni of farmers’ SRI nurseries and of villagers who have received SRI training, plus some village children. The Mbueni coordinator reported that they were persisting with plans to extend SRI to five more communities.[17]
KASHMIR
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As this chapter was being drafted, Agrinfobank, an internet blog based in Pakistan, posted an article titled “Rice intensification system can save farmers.” It called SRI a boon to Kashmiri paddy farmers “amid the present ‘hopeless’ condition.” The blog quoted Dr. Muhammad Anwar Bhat, a faculty member at the Shere-i-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, which is in the Indian part of the divided state of Jammu and Kashmir:
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With the SRI, a new way of cultivating rice has gained prominence among the farmers in several areas [of Jammu and Kashmir]. The new form of cultivation is not just cost-effective; it needs less water and gives higher yields as compared to traditional form of rice cultivation.
Dr. Bhat reported that with one-third less water and a 15-fold reduction in the amount of seed used, farmers in Kashmir were getting 50% increases in their paddy yield. “There remains [also] very less chance of pest infestation and diseases.”[18]
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Such a report coming from an area where conflict between armed forces has disrupted people’s lives for decades was particularly gratifying. In 2005, the WWF-ICRISAT program based in Hyderabad, India, had given SRI training and information to several faculty members from the Shere-i-Kashmir University and then provided them with a small grant to get field studies going.
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For a few years there were reports from the faculty about training and demonstrations going on in Jammu and Kashmir, with pictures sent such as those below of a training session held at the university in cooperation with the state’s agricultural extension department. It was a more formal setting than desirable, but that is the way extension work is conducted in Kashmir. For several years thereafter there was no more communication. But work on SRI continued as seen from a scientific article published in 2017[19] and then from the report of Dr. Bhat’s assessment in 2018.
In situations like this, initiative must be left in the hands of the people who live there. It would have been preferable to have had more field-based instruction and learning. But the approach taken by the university and extension service seems to have gotten the SRI ‘ball’ rolling, after which the application and adaptation of SRI is mostly in farmers’ hands.
VENEZUELA
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As this chapter was being written, this country had been going through one of the worst economic and political crises in Latin America for a decade. In 2018, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) started SRI trials and demonstrations in Venezuela with government research institute, private sector, and farmer-association cooperation. Despite the disruption of the economy and many services, work with SRI continued.
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Below are two pictures sent in April 2019, showing the phenotypic results that farmers were seeing with the new methods. An email informed me that one of the farmers who had been participating in SRI trials since its introduction started was setting up a small business to produce with SRI methods certified seed for the rice growers in his area. In times of crisis, lack of good seeds is usually one of principal constraints limiting food production.
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An advantage of SRI methods is their excellent capacity for seed multiplication. As many as 1,000 seeds can be harvested from an SRI rice plant grown from a single seed. Such thousand-fold seed multiplication cannot be matched by the methods of ‘modern’ agriculture.
INDIA
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When the Covid-19 pandemic reached India in 2020, some of the NGOs that had been leading in the efforts to disseminate SRI and SCI, PRADAN, PSI, WASSAN and others, formed an informal consortium to build Covid-containment activities in all of their programs working with communities on agricultural and other developments. SRI-Rice shared with them the clever ideas of Liberian farmers who drew a parallel between promoting SRI and combating the Covid-19 virus (endnote 15).
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In the northeastern state of Assam, the NGO known as SeSTA (Seven Sisters Development Assistance (SeSTA) which promotes livelihood opportunities for small and marginalized farmers, particularly in tribal communities, stepped up its activity in the field with a grant from the Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives (APPI) Foundation.[20]
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For about ten years SeSTA had been promoting SRI which it describes as “a unique method of farming which increases the yield of production while reducing the costs involved in production. It is a low-water, labour-intensive method that uses younger seedlings, singly-spaced, and hand-weeded with manual weeder.” The NGO had already brought SRI methods to 17,000 women farmers across 8 districts and 12 blocks of Assam, but there was a lack of appropriate equipment for best results. So it mobilized a grant to further assist these farmers.
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A July 2020 Facebook post reported that “in order to reduce the drudgery of the farmers and as a means of COVID response support,” SeSTA had been able to provide the farmers working with it 3,400 paddy weeders (each to be shared among 5 farmers), 8,500 spray machines for organic crop protection (to be shared by 2 farmers), and 17,000 kg of Trichoderma as a natural fungicide (1 kg per farmer). The women farmers, seen in pictures below, are members of self-help groups supported by the Assam State Rural Livelihoods Mission.
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The post concluded: “This will greatly help the women farmers to increase their farm yield and also protect their crops in this rice-growing season amidst the pandemic.” Tribal women in Assam are known for the bright colors of their clothing, and the weeders provided by SeSTA were likewise very colorful.
In Odisha state of India, the international agency IFAD supported a program called Indigenous People’s Assistance Facility to aid tribal communities during the Covid crisis. In Koraput district under this program the local NGO Pragati undertook training of unemployed youth, some repatriated from urban areas due to the pandemic, in System of Crop Intensification (SCI) methods for finger millet and vegetables such as chili, eggplant (brinjal), and beans. IFAD reported some gratifying of young Indians who returned to agriculture with this training, getting good economic incomes and giving local leadership for spreading the new methods.[21]
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CAMBODIA
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When the Covid-19 pandemic reached Cambodia and many workers had to leave their jobs in the cities and return home to rural areas for safety, the SRI program in Battambang province that had been established there by Brother Noel Oliver, S.J. (Chapter 25) began providing special training for Covid refugees to help them resettle. Brother Noel reported that the response of pandemic refugees to the new opportunities to revitalize local agriculture and provide employment was quite successful.[22]
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Almost a year later, Brother Noel wrote sadly to report that Cambodia was experiencing an upswing in Covid cases, into rural areas. Most of the rural schools where SRI was being introduced were closed because of the pandemic. At the Xavier Jesuit School, some of the students continued, and below on left we see students and some of their teachers transplanting the 2021 demonstration plots. The superior growth of the SRI plot on the right is evident to students, staff, and any visitors. Brother Noel wrote that teaching the new methods will resume in other schools after the pandemic has passed, but since schools not expected to reopen until August, if then, and this will be several months after the start of the 2021 planting season, a year is being lost in spreading demonstration plots. He was nevertheless optimistic that there will be spread to other provinces through the school system.[23]
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This and the preceding chapter have shown how and where SRI ideas and methods have proved to be particularly beneficial for women farmers and laborers, and for farmers and their families in countries or regions that have disrupted agriculture. This reflects the versatility of SRI as well as its propensity to benefit persons and households who are disadvantaged for one reason or another. This capability derives from the original impetus for SRI, enabling farmers to produce more food without having to rely on commercial or external inputs. Such inputs can be used with SRI, but their use is not necessarily agronomically and economically advantageous for farmers.
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There will be some times and places when and where SRI methods cannot produce net benefits for farmers, for example, where disruption and violence become really extreme and crops get destroyed. However, in such situations, more ‘mainstream’ methods are likely to be even less effective, and with more investment cost to lose.
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For meeting food needs in areas that are or have been disrupted by conflict, disease or disasters, SRI’s productivity increases do not depend so much on acquiring and using material inputs as on learning how to use available resources better and most productively. This is because the SRI innovation is more mobile, adaptable and versatile than typical agricultural technologies, something that is better understood and more appreciated now than it was 20 years ago when SRI was first being extended beyond its original home in Madagascar.
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NOTES AND REFERENCES
[1] The initial World Vision experience with SRI in Sierra Leone is recounted in its report to the international SRI conference in China in 2002.
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[2] Laura Lartigue, ‘New techniques improve rice farming in Sierra Leone,’ Reconstruction and Reintegration, USAID, Monrovia (2004).
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[3] Rajendra Uprety, ‘Extension under political insurgency: Gaining approval of Maoist rebels in Nepal,’ paper presented to 2006 international conference of the Asia-Pacific Extension Network (APEN).
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[4] The work going on after the armed conflict subsided is described in my 2006 trip report. A 2005 BBC report describes Rajendra’s work going on in Morang district previously. The motorcycles being used for SRI extension had been purchased by Rajendra from prize money that he had received from a World Bank-funded national competition to reward promising development initiatives (Chapter 33). Changing the color of the motorcycle license plates required only paint, not any approvals. Rajendra’s successful entry for promoting SRI was one of the 20 chosen for awards from among 1,037 applications.
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[5] On the introduction of SRI in Myanmar, see H. Kabir and N. Uphoff, ‘Results of disseminating the System of Rice Intensification with farmer field school methods in northern Myanmar,’ Experimental Agriculture 43: 463-476 (2008). In 2012, Seng-Raw Lahpi was honored for her development and reconciliation work with the Ramon Magsaysay Award, as discussed in Chapter 40.
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[6] See article posted on the Tat Lan website: ‘It is impossible to keep going using the traditional ways,’ December (2018).
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[7] See pages 10-11 of my 2008 trip report on a visit to Sri Lanka.
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[8] See report on this in the Cornell Chronicle in January 2013.
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[9] This result was noted already in Chapter 10. See G. Cook with T. O’Connor, ‘Rice aplenty in Aceh,’ Caritas News, 118: 10-11 (2009).
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[10] See V. Thomas and A.M. Ramzi, ‘SRI contributions to rice production dealing with water management constraints in northeastern Afghanistan,’ Paddy and Water Environment, 9: 101-109 (2011); A. M. Ramzi and H. Kabir, ‘Rice production under water management constraints with SRI methods in northeastern Afghanistan,’ Taiwan Water Conservancy, 61: 76-85 (2013).
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[11] The history of SRI work in Iraq is provided on its country page on the SRI website.
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[12] J. Gill, G. Deichert and Le Thi Nguyen Thu, eds., Promoting the System of Rice Intensification: Lessons Learned from Tra Vinh Province, Vietnam, GIZ, Hanoi (2013).
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[13] System of Rice Intensification: Trials and Potentials in Timor-Leste, Oxfam New Zealand, and Movimento Cooperative Economico-Agricola (MCE-A), Auckland, New Zealand, and Dili, Timor Leste.
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[14] The Minister’s remarks are reported in the Mazao Newsletter, December 2016.
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[15] Farmers drew the following analogies between SRI recommendations and the measures recommended for Covid-19 prevention, now posted on the SRI website,
See ‘Farmers remain focused on SRI technique amid Covid-19,’ Daily Observer (Monrovia), May 25, 2020.
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[16] In October 2018, the director for the BARUDEV farmer organization in Mbueni, Chia Ben Ful, wrote that farmer-to-farmer SRI training was continuing despite the continuing violence. “The [Ambazonian] Defense forces look upon me to be a spy because I move among the rice-cultivating communities which are located in the transit zone used by these forces when on patrol or when going to the war zone or battlefront.” He added that the SRI initiative had spread to five more communities in the area, as previously planned, and 250 more farmers had been trained in SRI methods despite the disruption.
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[17] In December 2019-January 2020, the NGO promoting SRI among women’s farming groups in the Ndop region did a survey by telephone of four groups and 25 women farmers to see how the SRI innovation had fared after separatist conflict broke out in 2018. Local staff of Skills for Development had had to leave the area, and its staff in London could not enter the region. From the report from Skills for Development:
In the survey they tell us of the fear for their lives due to gunshots and stray bullets; they need to be constantly moving for their safety, [creating] difficulties to get to their farms [with] significantly reduced areas they are farming. However, all of the farmers have remained in their farming groups (even when displaced), which shows the strength of the farming groups as a community group.
All the famers we surveyed were using SRI in their farms prior to the conflict. 19 (76%) of the farmers we surveyed are still farming rice. Of these, 18 (95%) are still using SRI. We found that even farmers who had been displaced and started farming in a new area, they would still be using SRI in their farms. SRI is a labour-intensive technique, so to use SRI in such difficult farming conditions is a testament to the value that the farmers see in the technique. (Tamara Palamakumbura, personal communication)
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[18] This blog from Pakistan was actually the reposting of a 2018 article in a newspaper, Greater Kashmir, published on the Indian side of the line-of-control. So information was moving across the contested border.
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[19] A. Sharma, D. Kachroo, R. Puniya, H. Ram, D. Joshi, P.G. Soni, T. Yadav and M.R. Yadav, ‘Impact of different transplanting dates and nutrient sources on soil microbial populations and paddy yield of basmati rice grown under SRI,’ International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences, 6: 778-782 (2017). All authors are in the Department of Agronomy at Shere-i-Kashmir University.
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[20] This foundation based in Bangalore has a wide portfolio of philanthropic initiatives including several SRI programs.
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[21] See ‘Indigenous youth in agriculture during COVID-19,’ IFAD website, August 7 (2020).
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[22] Neue Wege im Reisbau führen aus der Krise, Jesuiten Weltweit, August 28, 2020
[23] See the CROAP report for July 2021 posted on the SRI website. Noel’s email on July 15 concluded: “Hope we can spread this further to other Provinces in due course.”
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PICTURE CREDITS: USAID, article cited in endnote 6; SRI-Global (US); Iswandi Anas (Indonesia); Robert Bimba (CHAP); Ben Ful Chia (Cameroon) (2); Greater Kashmir (newspaper) (2); Kelly Witkowski (IICA) (2); Noel Oliver (2)