Alternative Paths to Food Security - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 214

reports that over 200,000 farmers are using the methods. Yield increases for small-
holder rainfed farms have been as much as four-fold ( http://sri.ciifad.cornell.edu/
countries/cambodia/camldsrpt07.pdf ) , but usually SRI methods are adding only 1.0
to 1.5 tons per hectare, because most Cambodian farmers have no irrigation facilities.
What has been seen in these countries is that after some initial resistance from farmers
and rice experts, the merits of agroecological management are increasingly understood
and supported. The scientific controversy has slowed acceptance to some extent; but the
new ideas are buoyed by productivity gains.
Considerations Affecting the
Dynamics of a Paradigm Shift for
Agricultural Improvement
That the national acceptance and promotion of SRI reported above has not been widely
publicized could reflect preferences and perceptions that favor Green Revolution strate-
gies, with a fixation on continuing to make changes in genetic potential and to increase
external inputs. Such approaches, perhaps not coincidentally, are ones that can be con-
trolled for privatized profit in ways that management-based technologies cannot. It is
hard to establish intellectual property rights (IPRs) over practices like wider spacing or
reduced age of transplanted seedlings. Few commercial interests stand to profit from SRI
promotion, and producers and sellers of seed, fertilizer, and agrochemicals are, indeed,
adversely affected. That SRI management reduces the need for irrigation water is some-
thing that policymakers can readily appreciate, since water scarcity and conflicts are
increasingly becoming a public concern rather than only a private or individual matter.
Resistance to management-oriented innovations can have various sources, as dis-
cussed below. Because the scientific issues are not yet fully resolved, there is no reason or
need here to try to draw any firm or final conclusions about agroecological alternatives.
However, considering possible explanations for the resistance that has been encountered
with SRI introduction raises social and political issues that researchers and policymakers
should reflect on. Thinking about the SRI experience illuminates certain aspects of the
workings of current systems, institutions, and cultures for agricultural improvement.
The lack of enthusiasm for SRI in high-level circles for research and policy is anoma-
lous, because two of the world's most eminent rice scientists, based on their own eval-
uations, early on expressed approval of SRI; namely, Prof. Yuan Long-ping in China,
known widely as “the father of hybrid rice,” and Dr. M. S. Swaminathan in India, often
referred to as “the father of the Indian Green Revolution” and a former director-gen-
eral of IRRI (Yuan 2001, 2002; MWR 2006; see Uphoff 2012). However, even endorse-
ments by such prominent leaders in agricultural innovation did not carry much weight
within the international rice science community (Dobermann 2004; Sheehy et al. 2004;
Sinclair and Cassman 2004).