SRI: does it work or what?

The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) strikes again, now on Java and Bali:

Farmers across Indonesia have bumper rice harvests thanks to a revolutionary method: 50 percent increase in yield with just one 10th of the seed, virtually no chemical fertilizers and little water.

SRI is a system which consists of transplanting widely spaced very young individual rice plants, using organic fertilizers, and not permanently saturating the fields with water. The method was developed — on the basis of existing farmer practices — by a priest in Madagascar in the 1980s, and it has since found a prophet in Norman Uphoff. It is still used in Madagascar, but mainly by larger farmers, as it is too labor intensive for the smaller farmers (who do the work for the large farmers). Or so I was told when I visited there earlier this year.

The BBC reported a doubling of yields in Nepal. George Bush was briefed about it during his visit to India. Luigi wrote about it a year ago. And now the reports of bumper crops in Indonesia.

All is for the best then? Not really: the whole thing is rather controversial. Tom Sinclair said this about it in 2004:

SRI appears to be only the latest in a family of unconfirmed field observations (UFOs) (…). While there is an abundance of “sightings,” they are anecdotal and reported by people who have minimum understanding of the basic scientific principles being challenged by such reports. In many cases, mysterious circumstances are invoked to explain the miraculous.

In a rather thorough review, in 2006, McDonald, Hobbs and Riha found that it sometimes works (in Madagascar), but that generally yields are 11% lower with SRI, not higher.

What is one to think then? Do newspapers blindly follow NGOs, and do farmers say what is scripted? Another case of overselling? Or is this a true farmer/priest led breakthrough, which scientist at fancy universities and research institutes just do not get?

There certainly has been overselling, with claims of unrealistically high rice yields (e.g., 15 tons per hectare). However, there could be circumstances where SRI does have benefits, for example on some problem soils (with iron toxicity), and perhaps in other low potential situations as well.

When SRI ‘works’, it is hard to know what farmers really did. Perhaps planting density was not quite that low, and organic fertilizer were applied at very high. What is SRI being compared with anyway? A degenerate farm, or a fully optimized ‘modern’ farm?

More field trials are planned. I am not optimisitic, but let’s hope that they will provide some clarity about the conditions under which SRI increases yields (or not). The dispute would be settled, and we’d have more rice for less resources.

Slow Food on the move

The Slow Food movement is evolving, its founder says: “People who sniff a cheese and talk about how it has the most wonderful aroma of horse sweat. Think how incredibly boring we would be if we were still just a gastronomic society.”

Ancient wheats brought up to date in Hungary

Quite by coincidence, while Luigi was digesting cereal diversity and nutrition, I was reading about an effort to bring ancient wheats up to date, also centred in Hungary. Geza Kovács of the Agricultural Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has overseen a project that looked at 250 einkorn (Triticum monococcum) and 130 emmer (T. dicoccum) samples from various genebanks and screened them to see how well they performed and what kind of grain they produced. The best 20 were selected for further breeding, with a particular eye on their performance in organic systems and how well they met the needs of end users such as bakers and consumers. ((I found a brief report in the Bulletin of the Organic Research Centre, and I am trying to source a published paper.))

Two particularly promising new einkorn varieties emerged, with “acceptable” yield compared to a bread wheat and significantly higher protein content. Other varieties have undetectable levels of gluten, which might make them suitable for people with gluten allergies. Some are also high in fat-soluble anti-oxidants. Some of the new emmers also show great promise, with protein levels higher than standard bread wheat and a high level of carotenoids.

Kovács also speculates that some of the new varieties may be a good source to resurrect the production of ancient foods such as frikeh. This is made from wheat, harvested at a critical point when the seeds are plump but still green and not yet mature. The seeds are dried and then burned. Frikeh is delicious — I tried some in Aleppo once — and could be an excellent snack for health-conscious consumers, and those who just want to eat something good that preserves diversity.