Experience of the Tata Trusts in promoting system of rice intensification (SRI) by Biswanath Sinha
Channel: IndiaWater Portal
Date: 2013-02-21

In this talk presented at the IWMI-TATA Annual Partners' meet at Anand, Gujarat in November 2012, Bishwanath Sinha presents the analysis of data collected by the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust over the last four years, and their learning from this experience. The talk presents several graphs of the growth of rice yield and statistics on the prevalance of rice cultivation and use. The main challenge before the Allied trusts is to focus on productivity enhancement for small and marginal farmers. SRI was determined to be the most effective means of acheiving this. Sinha presents information about the SRI programme as well as the experiments that apply SRI principles to other crops such as wheat. More importantly, this talk has a list of the prominent reasons that many  farmers give up practising SRI. These include delayed rainfall, unavailability of skilled labour, fragmentation of land, etc.
For more about the meet, visit here: http://www.indiawaterportal.org/iwmi-tata-apm-2012