About half the world’s population relies on rice as a staple food. In the past year, yields have stagnated and prices have soared up to 300%, provoking riots, panicked hoarding and violent protests in several countries.
So it’s beyond ironic to read about rice shortages in the rest of the world, and gaze over a large subak near Ubud that has been allowed to lie fallow. “A few of the farmers have planted vegetables, but because the return on rice is so low, many of them haven’t bothered planting it,” a resident explains to me. If the price of rice is not worth the planting, no wonder so many Balinese farmers are trying to sell their land to developers.
As the cost of oil spirals ever upwards (and unlikely to fall back down again, an oilman tells me), life becomes increasingly hard for a vast majority of Balinese. The cost of food -– and everything else –- is increasing constantly. Wayan Manis told me this morning that we should stop buying food that came from Java and focus on Balinese produce; wise advice for us all. As for the exotic groceries that come to Bali with big carbon footprints attached, perhaps it’s time to start weaning ourselves off these as well. (Although I confess I will cling to butter and olive oil as long as I rationally can.)
The cost of rice in Bali’s markets has also increased, although the price being paid at the farm gate has not. This is all very bad news to poor rice farmers whose meager kitchens often don’t run to much more than rice, chilies and vegetables. There can’t be a livelihood much less rewarding than to spend three months planting and tending a rice crop just to sell it to a middleman for the low price he offers. Most rice farmers have no room to negotiate; this is the only cash they see. It’s the middleman who reaps the profit. The only way to make rice farming more attractive is to make it more lucrative.
Since 2006 I’ve been working with Chakra, a young Balinese committed to helping rice farmers bring back the ancient fields to their natural balance and fertility. Last year, with a grant from The Funding Network in England, we designed a pilot project to train some Balinese subaks in the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). This system, designed ten years ago by Father Henri de Laulanie, a French Jesuit priest in Madagascar, dramatically increases the yield. Chakra, who has spent the past three years studying sustainable agriculture techniques, became an expert in the SRI after researching the system and trialing it on his own land.
When the word got out that there would be free training for this new system, many more farmers applied for the workshop than there as room for. Because Chakra and one assistant would be visiting the subaks on request to ensure the farmers were supported throughout the growing cycle, it was imperative to keep the size of the project manageable. In November 2007, 32 subak leaders from Gianyar, Karangasem and Tabanan attended two days of training in SRI theory, seed selection and composting.
When their fields were prepared, the farmers planted a total of five hectares in hybrid white rice and two hectares in red rice using the SRI. For the next three months, Chakra and Pak Warsa zoomed across the island in all weather on their motorcycles to visit the fields. They were present for each planting, and again eight days later to monitor the seedlings. Whenever a farmer called with a question or a problem, one or the other would visit the field and provide assistance, making a total of 57 site visits before harvest.
It was already evident halfway through the growth cycle that the SRI fields were outperforming the conventional rice nearby. The plants were taller, greener and larger than the non-SRI rice. The average number of tillers -- rice-bearing stalks -- was 36 on the hybrid, conventionally grown rice. The plants on the SRI fields averaged 70 tillers.
At harvest time, both Chakra and Warsa were there to record the yields. The SRI harvests of white rice were excellent. (The red rice had not been harvested at the time of writing.) The project farmers reported that they’d been getting about 6.5 tons of rice per hectare using the conventional method; the SRI harvests were 8 - 11 tons per hectare using the same rice variety. Because the grains were larger, each bag of harvested rice weighed about four kg more than usual. Harvesters commented on the ease with which the grain fell from the stalks, making their task easier. And the roots of the SRI plants were easily four times the size those of the regular rice plants. Neighbouring farmers who had scoffed at the SRI farmers are lining up to learn the system -- viral marketing in an agricultural context.
In addition to a larger harvest, the SRI has other benefits for farmers. The system uses 5 kg of seed per hectare instead of the 50 kg planted in conventional farming, a saving in cost and labour as farmers can start and monitor the seedlings in a small container at home. A single seedling is planted instead of a clump, allowing more air and sunlight to reach each plant. The less-is-more concept continues during cultivation, when a little water is let into the field for just two days a week and the field is allowed to dry out for five days, encouraging the roots of the plant to grow strong and deep and using 80% less water in total. Herbicides, pesticides and fungicides cannot be used in the SRI, saving the farmers the cost of chemicals.
The project farmers used some urea (chemical phosphate) during cultivation, but one study indicates that even this may not be necessary. In a paper published in Ecological Economics (2001, issue 38, pages 383-390) by 12 American and Indonesian scientists, research showed that enough natural “…phosphate and potassium are continuously leached from the volcanic soil by rainfall and delivered to rice paddies by irrigation systems in quantities sufficient for abundant rice harvests. The superfluous P fertilizer applied by farmers for the past three decades washes directly into the rivers, representing a significant ecological threat to waterways and perhaps coastal waters, as well as a certain economic burden on farmers.”
In Madagascar where the SRI was first tested, rice farmers who had typically harvested two tons per hectare now claim between 5 and 8 tons. In the Timbuktu region of Mali, on the edge of the Sahara Desert, farmers raised rice yields 34 percent. In Laos, an agriculture official recently said SRI had doubled the size of rice crops in three provinces and would spread to the whole country because it provided greater yields with fewer resources. In June 2008, the New York Times carried a story about the success of SRI and its rapid spread. Skepticism and resistance from some members of the scientific community is largely irrelevant as farmers vote with their hoes and pass on the system to their eager neighbours.
Father Henri died in 1995, before he could see the success of the system he developed. May he look down with a smile on the many rice farms around the world made more prosperous by the SRI. And may farmers continue to learn and share this gift of abundance which so respects the balance of Nature.
