Rice is the world's most commonly grown and consumed crop. It also supports lives and livelihoods, especially in low- and middle-income regions. As such, methods for securing abundant and profitable rice harvests are key in global food security.
The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) offers a repeatable, sustainable system for increasing rice yields. It brings together fundamental planting and harvesting techniques such as strategically spacing plants, minimizing water, and transplanting seedlings. These practices can be repeated in varying conditions. While SRI has been around since the mid-1980s, need persists for evidence to back its merits and distinguish its techniques.
New findings published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics now give much-needed evidence of SRI, following its diffusion to more than 5,000 Bangladeshi farmers. SRI training was introduced and evaluated among the rice farmers in a similar manner to a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in medicine. Certain communities were trained while others were not. This created a pure control group, similar to those who receive a placebo or receiving nothing in an RCT. That in turn allowed compelling comparisons, along with insights into related effects of the training.
Professor Abdul Malek of the University of Tsukuba (Japan), together with international colleagues including Asad Islam (Monash University), Christopher Barrett (Cornell University), Marcel Fafchamps (Stanford University), and Debayan Pakrashi (Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur), conducted these randomized introductions of SRI in Bangladesh and studied them from agricultural and social angles. The core of the researchers' work was two RCTs in 2014-2015 and 2015-2016.