Well this article is far apart from the techies, its about agriculture – the root of our country, the biggest revenue generating sector. I was going through an article in The Hindu when I was delighted to see some innovation, the technique of increasing rice/paddy yield while simultaneously reducing the fertilizer & water input – System of Rice Intensification. The article is quite old – dated March 2008, but it had always been there at the back of mind.

The Chennai Agriculture Department has created a record by producing more than 10 tonnes of paddy per hectare in select pockets in the State by adopting the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) technique. The average productivity in the State is 4 to 5 tonnes per hectare. The maximum yield was achieved by a farmer in Tiruvannamalai district, who had harvested 14.27 tonnes per hectare and by another farmer in Kallakurichi in Villupuram district whose per hectare yield was 13.38 tonnes.

I was happy to notice, at least some universities are actually progressed on the practical front, rather than disillusioning students with theoretical-memory-intensive-exhaustive-exam

s.

This, according to department officials … claimed that it was a phenomenal record as the average productivity was less than 3 tonnes in the country…Continuous monitoring by the officials and agriculture scientists of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) and the cooperation of the farmers resulted in the high yield …technique had proved to enhance rice productivity by 30 to 40 %per cent with comparatively less water, the is taking steps to popularize it for large-scale adoption.

Well, I was searching through sites and other places for the theory of this efficient technique when I landed here. One can find wealth of resources here. One of being the presentation down below. I’ve just uploaded the pdf version as is, so that people can view the presentation right away. Its a very enlightening presentation, gives a very good view point of what SRI is, and focus on statistics and yield improvement following the practice.

The SRI technique requires considerably less amount of following than that would have taken in the conventional methods -

• Seeds,
• Fertilizers,
• Labour,
• Water
• Nursery area.

On an average, a farmer could save at least Rs.1,600 per hectare by adopting the technique, the officials said.

Sources:

• The Hindu (Google) <|> HinduOnNet (Google)
• System of Rice Intensification <|> SRI, India Specific
• SRI India

I find The Hindu only one country newspaper which is keeping a track of all the developments in Indian agriculture at least SRI very-very closely. Just final closing words, I went to the Department of Agriculture, Andhra Pradesh Website and took some stats from there -

• Achievement of Action Plan 2007-08
  • Organized 3,557 demonstrations on SRI @ 100 ha area per demonstration
• Action Plan 2008-09
  • Demonstration on 0.4 Ha of Land area, each costing Rs. 3000/- per demonstrations.
  • It is planned to organize 1680 demonstrations with an estimated cost of Rs. 50.40 lakhs during the eleventh plan period.

I also went to the Tamil Nadu’s State Agriculture Website, but didn’t find an English version (that’s one), the other being no published document called ‘action plan‘. The best of all, the State Agricultural departmental webiste is not even listed on the department wise list of state website.

I think all the government have short-comings here or there! Anyways, I’m tired of the websites being created by NIC. They are worst ever Govt. websites in the whole damn world. I’ve an article kept in the draft mode for quite long time focused on technical shortcoming HOLES in NIC run websites, I will soon publish it.

Namaskaar for now!