Sumant Kumar photographed in Darveshpura, Bihar, India. Photograph: Chiara Goia for Observer Food Monthly |
By John Vidal, The Guardian, February 16, 2013
Sumant Kumar was overjoyed when he harvested his rice
last year. There had been good rains in his village of Darveshpura in
north-east India and he knew he could improve on the
four or five tonnes per hectare that he usually managed. But every stalk he cut
on his paddy field near the bank of the Sakri river seemed to weigh heavier
than usual, every grain of rice was bigger and when his crop was weighed on the
old village scales, even Kumar was shocked.
This was not six or even 10 or 20 tonnes. Kumar, a shy
young farmer in Nalanda district of India's poorest state Bihar, had – using
only farmyard manure and without any herbicides – grown an astonishing 22.4
tonnes of rice on one hectare of land. This was a world record and with rice
the staple food of more than half the world's
population of seven billion, big news.
It beat not just the 19.4 tonnes achieved by the
"father of rice", the Chinese agricultural scientist Yuan Longping, but the World Bank-funded
scientists at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, and anything
achieved by the biggest European and American seed and GM companies. And it was not just Sumant Kumar. Krishna, Nitish, Sanjay and
Bijay, his friends and rivals in Darveshpura, all recorded over 17 tonnes, and
many others in the villages around claimed to have more than doubled their
usual yields.
The villagers, at the mercy of erratic weather and used
to going without food in bad years, celebrated. But the Bihar state
agricultural universities didn't believe them at first, while India's leading
rice scientists muttered about freak results. The Nalanda farmers were accused
of cheating. Only when the state's head of agriculture,
a rice farmer himself, came to the village with his own men and personally
verified Sumant's crop, was the record confirmed.
The rhythm of Nalanda village life was shattered. Here
bullocks still pull ploughs as they have always done, their dung is still dried
on the walls of houses and used to cook food. Electricity has still not reached
most people. Sumant became a local hero, mentioned in the Indian parliament and
asked to attend conferences. The state's chief minister came to Darveshpura to
congratulate him, and the village was rewarded with electric power, a bank and
a new concrete bridge.
That might have been the end of the story had Sumant's
friend Nitish not smashed the world record for growing potatoes six months
later. Shortly after Ravindra Kumar, a small farmer from a nearby Bihari
village, broke the Indian record for growing wheat. Darveshpura became known as
India's "miracle village", Nalanda became famous and teams of
scientists, development groups, farmers, civil servants and politicians all
descended to discover its secret.
When I meet the young farmers, all in their early 30s,
they still seem slightly dazed by their fame. They've become unlikely heroes in
a state where nearly half the families live below the Indian poverty line and
93% of the 100 million population depend on growing rice and potatoes. Nitish
Kumar speaks quietly of his success and says he is determined to improve on the
record. "In previous years, farming has not been very profitable," he
says. "Now I realise that it can be. My whole life has changed. I can send
my children to school and spend more on health. My income has increased a
lot."
What happened in Darveshpura has divided scientists and
is exciting governments and development experts. Tests on the soil show it is
particularly rich in silicon but the reason for the "super yields" is
entirely down to a method of growing crops called System of Rice (or root)
Intensification (SRI). It has dramatically increased yields with wheat,
potatoes, sugar cane, yams, tomatoes, garlic, aubergine and many other crops
and is being hailed as one of the most significant developments of the past 50
years for the world's 500 million small-scale farmers and the two billion
people who depend on them.
Instead of planting three-week-old rice seedlings in
clumps of three or four in waterlogged fields, as rice farmers around the world
traditionally do, the Darveshpura farmers carefully nurture only half as many
seeds, and then transplant the young plants into fields, one by one, when much
younger. Additionally, they space them at 25cm intervals in a grid pattern,
keep the soil much drier and carefully weed around the plants to allow air to
their roots. The premise that "less is more" was taught by Rajiv
Kumar, a young Bihar state government extension worker who had been trained in
turn by Anil Verma of a small Indian NGO called Pran (Preservation and
Proliferation
of Rural Resources and Nature), which has introduced the SRI method to hundreds
of villages in the past three years.
While the "green revolution" that averted
Indian famine in the 1970s relied on improved crop varieties, expensive
pesticides and chemical fertilisers, SRI appears to offer a long-term,
sustainable future for no extra cost. With more than one in seven of the global
population going hungry and demand for rice expected to outstrip supply within
20 years, it appears to offer real hope. Even a 30% increase in the yields of
the world's small farmers would go a long way to alleviating poverty.
"Farmers use less seeds, less water and less
chemicals but they get more without having to invest more. This is
revolutionary," said Dr Surendra Chaurassa from Bihar's agriculture
ministry.
"I did not believe it to start with, but now I think it can potentially
change the way everyone farms. I would want every state to promote it. If we
get 30-40% increase in yields, that is more than enough to recommend it."
The results in Bihar have exceeded Chaurassa's hopes.
Sudama Mahto, an agriculture officer in Nalanda, says a small investment in
training a few hundred people to teach SRI methods has resulted in a 45%
increase in the region's yields. Veerapandi Arumugam, the former agriculture
minister of Tamil Nadu state, hailed the system as "revolutionising"
farming.
SRI's origins go back to the 1980s in Madagascar where Henri de Laulanie, a French
Jesuit priest and agronomist, observed how villagers grew rice in the uplands.
He developed the method but it was an American, professor Norman Uphoff,
director of the International
Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development at Cornell University, who was largely responsible for
spreading the word about De Laulanie's work.
Given $15m by an anonymous billionaire to research sustainable development, Uphoff went to Madagascar in 1983 and saw the success of SRI
for himself: farmers whose previous yields averaged two tonnes per hectare were
harvesting eight tonnes. In 1997 he started to actively promote SRI in Asia,
where more than 600 million people are malnourished.
"It is a set of ideas, the absolute opposite to the
first green revolution [of the 60s] which said that you had to change the genes
and the soil nutrients to improve yields. That came at a tremendous ecological
cost," says Uphoff. "Agriculture in the 21st century must be
practised differently. Land and water resources are becoming scarcer, of poorer
quality, or less reliable. Climatic conditions are in many places more adverse.
SRI offers millions of disadvantaged households far better opportunities.
Nobody is benefiting from this except the farmers; there are no patents,
royalties or licensing fees."
For 40 years now, says Uphoff, science has been obsessed
with improving seeds and using artificial fertilisers: "It's been genes,
genes, genes. There has never been talk of managing crops. Corporations say 'we
will breed you a better plant' and breeders work hard to get 5-10% increase in
yields. We have tried to make agriculture an industrial enterprise and have
forgotten its biological roots."
Not everyone agrees. Some scientists complain there is
not enough peer-reviewed evidence around SRI and that it is impossible to get
such returns. "SRI is a set of management practices and nothing else, many
of which have been known for a long time and are best recommended practice,"
says Achim Dobermann, deputy director for research at the International Rice
Research Institute. "Scientifically speaking I don't believe there is any
miracle. When people independently have evaluated SRI principles then the
result has usually been quite different from what has been reported on farm
evaluations conducted by NGOs and others who are promoting it. Most scientists
have had difficulty replicating the observations."
Dominic Glover, a British researcher working with
Wageningen University in the Netherlands, has spent years analysing the
introduction of GM crops in developing countries. He is now following how SRI
is being adopted in India and believes there has been a "turf war".
"There are experts in their fields defending their
knowledge," he says. "But in many areas, growers have tried SRI
methods and abandoned them. People are unwilling to investigate this. SRI is
good for small farmers who rely on their own families for labour, but not
necessarily for larger operations. Rather than any magical theory, it is good
husbandry, skill and attention which results in the super yields. Clearly in
certain circumstances, it is an efficient resource for farmers. But it is
labour intensive and nobody has come up with the technology to transplant
single seedlings yet."
But some larger farmers in Bihar say it is not labour
intensive and can actually reduce time spent in fields. "When a farmer
does SRI the first time, yes it is more labour intensive," says Santosh
Kumar, who grows 15 hectares of rice and vegetables in Nalanda. "Then it
gets easier and new innovations are taking place now."
In its early days, SRI was dismissed or vilified by
donors and scientists but in the past few years it has gained credibility.
Uphoff estimates there are now 4-5 million farmers using SRI worldwide, with
governments in China, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam
promoting it.
Sumant, Nitish and as many as 100,000 other SRI farmers
in Bihar are now preparing their next rice crop. It's back-breaking work
transplanting the young rice shoots from the nursery beds to the paddy fields
but buoyed by recognition and results, their confidence and optimism in the
future is sky high.
Last month Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz visited Nalanda district and
recognised the potential of this kind of organic farming, telling the villagers
they were "better than scientists". "It was amazing to see their
success in organic farming," said Stiglitz, who called for more research.
"Agriculture scientists from across the world should visit and learn and
be inspired by them."
Bihar, from being India's poorest state, is now at the
centre of what is being called a "new green grassroots revolution"
with farming villages, research groups and NGOs all beginning to experiment
with different crops using SRI. The state will invest $50m in SRI next year but
western governments and foundations are holding back, preferring to invest in
hi-tech research. The agronomist Anil Verma does not understand why: "The
farmers know SRI works, but help is needed to train them. We know it works
differently in different soils but the principles are solid," he says.
"The biggest problem we have is that people want to do it but we do not
have enough trainers.
"If any scientist or a company came up with a technology
that almost guaranteed a 50% increase in yields at no extra cost they would get
a Nobel prize. But when young Biharian farmers do that they get nothing. I only
want to see the poor farmers have enough to eat."
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