Rice intensification helps farmers grow more with less

The rest of the time, people buy rice from wholesalers, hoisting 20-kilogram (44-pound) burlap sacks onto communal minibuses or horse-drawn carts for the long ride home.

But since officials at ANCAR introduced a new method for growing rice, called the “system of rice intensification” (SRI), yields have more than doubled. For the first time, according to ANCAR, families can live off their own crop and make money from the surplus.

“Our mission is to help farmers achieve stability,” Sy said. “But we have good luck, since there’s another benefit: SRI saves water and combats climate change, too.”

Developed in Madagascar in the mid-1960s, SRI has been spreading across Africa for the past 20 years, driven by a group of enthusiastic advocates with international support. It’s increasingly seen by officials as a way to decrease methane emissions; alongside four other countries, Senegal committed to fund new SRI projects as “mitigation actions” in its 2020 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), its pledge under the Paris climate deal. In January 2023, after years of testing and pilot programs, the Sahara and Sahel Observatory, an intergovernmental collaboration that represents 13 West African states, launched a new project, extending SRI use to more than 150,000 farmers across West Africa.

Since officials at ANCAR introduced a new method for growing rice, called the “system of rice intensification” (SRI), yields have more than doubled.

Today, 70% of Senegalese work in agriculture, although less than a fifth of the country’s land is arable. Food insecurity remains a serious concern in Senegal, where the two largest crops by production value are cash crops: sugarcane and groundnuts. Historically, the government imported staple foods like rice, wheat and maize to fill the gap between the population’s needs and domestic production. The heavy influx of grains made Senegal one of the world’s largest net importers of food, totally dependent on foreign-grown calories.

To meet its current demand, Senegal must grow or buy more than 2 million metric tons of rice each year. The country has invested in subsidies to boost domestic rice production. Yet in such a dry region, growing rice can be difficult for small-scale farmers. Conventional rice production uses flooded fields, which encourage the crop to grow by drowning out weeds. But in Senegal, where surface water evaporates quickly and farmers lack the infrastructure to manage it, keeping rice crops submerged is a difficult task.

“That’s where SRI offers us this opportunity,” said Bancy Mati, an agronomist at Jomo Kenyatta University in Kenya who has spent years studying SRI across Africa. “SRI methods increase yields, reduce seed use, and save water, all at the same time.”

The SRI methodology was developed by a French priest, Henri de Laulanié, who worked alongside farmers with few resources in rural Madagascar from the 1960s till his death in 1995. Laulanié claimed he developed SRI’s core principles simply by observing his rice plants, which he dubbed his “masters.”

Encouraged by the productivity of his crops, Laulanié created a nonprofit called Tefy Saina, which collaborated on SRI research projects with Cornell University scientist Norman Uphoff. After several years of trials, Uphoff and his partners began sharing results with the scientific community. The conclusion was clear: across the world, despite regional differences in soil ecosystems, climate and infrastructure, SRI produced more rice with less water.

The SRI methodology consists of several core principles: minimize competition between plants, balance the availability of water and oxygen in the soil, and build up soil fertility.

In practice, this means farmers should transplant rice seedlings at a young age and raise them in unflooded nurseries, spaced far apart from each other. After transplanting, farmers should either add small amounts of water each day or alternate between flooding and drying the land.

In conventional rice agriculture, farmers toss clusters of seeds into a wet seedbed. After a few weeks, they transplant the young seedlings into flooded fields. But when the earth is saturated, research suggests, plant roots break down, and some of the small organisms that help soil ecosystems thrive suffocate without oxygen.

Manual spreading of rice seedlings. In Senegal, where surface water evaporates quickly and farmers lack the infrastructure to manage it, keeping rice crops submerged is a difficult task. SRI methods come in use here.

“The rice plant is a water-loving plant,” Mati said, “but there is no need to waste water flooding the paddy unnecessarily.”

When plants experience just a small amount of water stress, their root systems expand in search of moisture.

“If plants are grown to have bigger, deeper root systems, they can manage with less rainfall or irrigation, because they can access soil moisture,” Uphoff said. By deliberately stressing their crops, farmers are able to produce higher yields with SRI, as the plants have stronger roots and less competition with other seedlings.

Unflooded soil allows weeds to grow and compete with rice. To help the crop grow unimpeded, the SRI methodology suggests farmers remove weeds with a simple hand weeder, which aerates the soil and eliminates competition for the rice crop. It’s a labor-intensive process, but hand weeding helps reinforce the soil ecosystem.

“SRI uses less seed and less water,” Mati said. “It helps farmers make the most of what they have.”