Alternative Paths to Food Security - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 206

Fertilizer can be used beneficially with the other SRI practices, but it does little
to improve the structure and functioning of soil systems (Uphoff et al. 2006).
SRI is not necessarily an “organic” production methodology, but enhancing the
soil's organic matter is essential for it and its resident organisms to function most
productively.
A number of variations have derived from these original insights of Fr. Laulanié. There
are, for example, rainfed, unirrigated versions of SRI in India, Cambodia, and Myanmar,
with similar good results (e.g., Kabir and Uphoff 2007). Some farmers do direct-seeding
rather than transplanting, using wide spacing, soil aeration, enhanced soil organic
matter, and so on, and getting comparable yields with less labor inputs. Conservation
agriculture with no tillage is being combined with SRI: transplanting young seedlings
into permanent raised beds; maintaining mulch or other ground cover on the soil; and
rotating crops. SRI operations can be almost fully mechanized to save labor as well as
water (Sharif 2011). Also, SRI concepts and methods are being adapted to other crops, as
reviewed in section 5.
Such changes underscore that SRI is not a technology so much as a different paradigm
for optimizing the expression of crops' genetic potentials, changing their growing envi-
ronment rather than their genes. The recommended practices can look risky to farmers
at first. In Cambodia and Sri Lanka, however, it has been found that they reduce farmers'
risks of crop failure and economic loss (Anthofer 2004; Namara et al. 2008). SRI prac-
tices are found to reduce rice plants' susceptibility to damage from insects and patho-
gens and to lodging from wind and rain, as well as to the effects of drought (Adhikari
et al. 2010; Chapagain and Yamaji 2010; Uphoff 2011). Phenotypical improvements asso-
ciated with SRI crop management have been documented in Barison and Uphoff (2011),
Lin et al. (2009), Mishra and Salokhe (2010), Thakur, Uphoff, and Antony (2010), and
Zhao et al. (2009). Fully explaining all this still requires further study, however.
Contributions of Microbes to
Agricultural Success
Beneficial Effects of Microbes in the Roots and Rhizosphere
Positive relationships have been observed with SRI practices among crop management,
populations of soil microorganisms, and rice plant performance (Uphoff et al. 2009). An
association between higher yields and soil bacteria living within rice plant roots was first
seen in factorial trials done in 2001 in Madagascar evaluating different combinations
of SRI and non-SRI practices, using random block design and with replications of each
treatment (Randriamiharisoa and Uphoff 2002; Uphoff and Randriamiharisoa 2002).
With all-standard practices (20-day-old seedlings, 3 per hill, continuous flooding, and