We are now exactly halfway through the International Water for Life Decade (2005-2015), a designation developed by the United Nations to wake up the world to the water and sanitation crisis. We keep adding people to the planet but water resources are diminishing. Making agriculture more water efficient has to be a top priority. In the US, according to the USDA, agriculture accounts for 80% of our water use and over 90% in many Western States. Globally, one of the largest consumers of water is rice. Each year, about one third of the world’s freshwater goes to grow rice. That’s A LOT of water!! Irrigated rice takes 2-3 times more water than wheat or maize, the two other major food staples. Rice is not an aquatic plant but flooding it is an efficient way to control weeds, and in many areas, before pesticide use became so prevalent, farmers raised fish and ducks in the fields, which provided an important source of protein. With competition for water intensifying the world over, using 3,000-5,000 liters of water to grow a kilo of rice is simply not sustainable. In many parts of India and China, farmers are having to drill deeper and deeper to find water. Decades of pumping water out of the ground, sometimes 8 hours a day for over 100 days each year to sustain the recommended levels is leading to serious shortages. Only 50% of the world’s rice land is irrigated, but it produces 75% of the world’s rice supply, so a major challenge is to find ways to improve the efficiency of irrigated systems while maintaining or increasing yields.

We are very excited to be working with a visionary methodology for rice cultivation that is rapidly spreading among farmers in more than 35 countries. It is called the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and it enables even the poorest farmers to increase their yields anywhere from 20 to 100% while using 50% less water, 90% less seeds, and no agrochemicals. It sounds too good to be true, but it is based on sound agronomic principles. Farmers practicing SRI do not keep their fields permanently flooded; water is drained off periodically. The soil is kept aerated, just like the soils in your garden, and nourished with compost and natural fertilizers. This, together with wider spacing of plants, results in healthier root systems and more productive plants. Farmers can use their own saved seed and they get good yields with their traditional varieties. With lower production costs, they are less likely to become indebted and the additional rice, whether eaten at home or sold, also helps boost incomes. An added benefit of SRI techniques is that because the fields are not flooded and farmers use less or no synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, methane emissions are reduced. It is estimated that flooded rice paddies contribute 8-20% of global methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

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