Tag Archives: agriculture

The whole way

Central to making farming more environmentally friendly, and so preserving and restoring such magnificent landscapes as this one in Bhutan, is the application...

Rice to the tiller

Perhaps surprisingly, farmers do not perform most of the labor on rice farms in South and Southeast Asia. In the Philippines and on the Indonesian island of Java, for example, rice farm families work  on average less than 40 days per year on the fundamental tasks of growing rice. If both husband and wife share this labor, each averages 13 hours per month. This is good...

Agronomic UFOs waste valuable scientific resources

Discussion of the system of rice intensification (SRI) is unfortunate because it implies SRI merits serious consideration. SRI does not deserve such attention. A multinational team has shown from both theoretical evaluations and a number of experimental tests that SRI offers no yield advantage. Significantly, these results by Sheehy et al. were published in Field Crops...

System of rice intensification responds to 21st century needs

The system of rice intensification (SRI) was developed in Madagascar 20 years ago by Fr. Henri de Laulanié of the Society of Jesus after 2 decades of working with farmers to raise their rice production without depending on external inputs. Today, SRI is gaining acceptance around the world. Practiced only in Madagascar until 1999, it has since demonstrated its environmentally...

Agriculture and poverty reduction: unlocking the potential

The United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) is the government department responsible for promoting sustainable development...

Taking part

A Tribal woman in northern Laos votes her preference by piling Job’s tears next to the name of a rice variety. This mode of preference analysis voting...

Crying time

(Photo: Peter Fredenburg) When they come calling in a village, Truong Thi Ngoc Chi and Tran Thi Ngoc Mai bring the refreshments. They do this because the...

Fear and loathing drive needless insecticide use

A wasp larvae is a parasite that attacks cutworm larva. (Photo: Friends Of The Rice Farmer: Helpful Insects, Spiders, And Pathogens) Rice farmers, like...

Contours of change

(Photo: IRRI) My American husband certainly is not alone as a foreigner with a keen interest in the Ifugao and our rice terraces. My people have been the...

Cooperating for peace

Former German Chancellor Willy Brandt once described development aid as “the peace policy of the 21st century.” Cooperation for development, to use...

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