Record rice yields in India questioned

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Last year, Sumant Kumar, a poor farmer from the village of Darveshpura in northeast India, harvested a record 22.4 tonnes of rice from a hectare of land, more than double the usual yields and surpassing the previous world record of 19.4 tonnes set by a scientist at a research institute in the Philippines. A few months later, farmers in the same village crushed records for potato yields and, nearby, records were broken for wheat yields.

The commonality is a new system for hand-planting called System of Root (or rice) Intensification, which greatly increased the potential to increase yields for small farmers. It was promoted by the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development in New York State.

The Darveshpura farmers plant half as many young rice seedlings singly, rather than in clumps of four, 10 inches apart in a grid pattern. And they keep the soil dry (rather than flood rice paddies) and weed around them. It is the management that counts, not the seed genetics or the fertilizer. (No chemicals are used, just livestock manure.)

The results are being challenged by more traditional scientists (who support the Green Revolution principles of hybridized seed and more fertilizer) while local Indian officials state that the yields are accurate.

Someone is going to look silly when enough studies are conducted and described in peer-reviewed journals. BF