Alternative Paths to Food Security - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 209

which they can function in ecologically interactive ways that yield higher productivity
and greater sustainability.
Effects of Agroecological
Management with Other Crops
Although the insights and methods that constitute SRI were developed for irrigated rice
production, they have been extended to unirrigated (i.e., rainfed or upland) rice cultiva-
tion with similar success. In the last five years, SRI ideas and practices have been extrap-
olated to a variety of other crops such as wheat (Bhalla 2010; Prasad 2008; Styger et al.
2011) and sugarcane (ICRISAT-WWF 2009). Other crops for which higher production
is reported from making adaptations of SRI ideas and methods include sugarcane; red,
green, and black gram; mustard; and eggplant. In Ethiopia, yields of teff, the nationally
preferred staple grain, are being increased three-fold with appropriate adaptations of
SRI ideas (Berhe et al. 2013). SRI experience is thus becoming relevant for agroecologi-
cal innovation beyond rice, within the broader agricultural sector (Abraham et al. 2013).
Reviewing the Dynamics of an
Agroecological Innovation
That the performance of many crops, not just rice, can be improved by making changes
in the management of plants, soil, water, and nutrients, thereby enhancing yield and also
conferring resilience to the hazards of climate change, is extending our understanding
of agroecological practices and their effects. There are still gaps in the scientific under-
standing of agricultural strategies that focus more on the improvement of E than on G .
But this should not be surprising, since the resources devoted to explicating and refin-
ing the newer paradigm have been, at most, a few percent of what has been invested in
developing and promoting “mainstream” methods. What may be surprising is the oppo-
sition that SRI has encountered, with some scientists arguing that SRI should not even
be evaluated, and characterizing any evaluation as a waste of resources.
Gains from Conventional Improvement Methods Compared
with Agroecological Management
Scientific findings in the realm of plant-microbial interaction, as seen in section 4, are
making the logic of agroecology increasingly persuasive as a complement or alternative