SRI techniques

CHENNAI: Recently, N Sripathi of Paduvencherri, some 30 km south of Chennai, braving ridicule from co-farmers adopted the System of Rice
Intensification (SRI) on his two-and-half-acre farm. Now, he is expecting to double last season's harvest.

Last year, K Purushothaman of Nanmangalam adopted SRI and got per hectare 18 bags' more than the conventional method of farming (each bag weighs 75 kg of paddy).

In the traditional method, the average yield is around 45 bags' per hectare; Purushothaman got 63 bags.'. Last year, each bag' of paddy was sold for about Rs 1,050. "SRI has many advantages in terms of production cost and the yield per hectare. Farmers can adopt it to maximise net yield," said Purushothaman.

Under SRI, the adequate space between crops 22.5 cm ensures free air circulation and provides them with much-needed oxygen to grow tall. The adequate spacing also helps farmers detect rats and weeds. Using this technique, the required period for paddy cultivation can be brought down by 10 days (it is 120 days in the conventional method).

The most common pieces of equipment in SRI are the Conoweeder used to crush weeds and include them as bio-manure and Marker used to mark space between each crop. "At a time when housing projects and companies are coming up on farming lands in the suburbs, we have to adopt new methods to stay in our ancestral job. SRI can help us do that," said Sripathi.