He asked her to come to Gaya immediately and after a hurried meeting broke the news to her: The Bihar chief minister wanted to meet her. “I was terrified,” she says.”Why was the CM calling me? What wrong had I done?” But there was no time to think. Jyoti Devi and her husband Baleshwar Bhuiyan caught the next train to Patna and reached 1, Anne Marg, the official residence of Nitish Kumar. “When we entered the CM’s chamber, Nitish ji turned towards us and asked rather abruptly what had brought us to his house. Though I was shocked at the question, I gathered all my courage and said, ‘Tuhi na bulaye ho hamra ke’ (It’s you who invited me.)

He laughed and began talking about the work I was doing in my village, on my fields, for my community. We left after a few minutes.” There was more shock in store for her. A fortnight after the meeting with Nitish Kumar, someone told her that her name had appeared in newspapers as the JD(U) candidate from Barachatti in Gaya district. Soon, another call asked her to collect the party’s symbol. It was a blur after that. “I had absolutely no idea what was happening and why they were happening,” she says, smiling. “I had never imagined I would contest elections. I got the ticket without asking, when people all the time talk about even the highly influential and rich lobbying endlessly for such an opportunity.”

Forty-two-year-old Jyoti Devi’s life story is as amazing as the prelude that brought her to politics, making her a legislator from a caste marginalised by even the most marginalised, a Dalit even for the Dalits — the rat-eating Musahars, a community that feeds on rodents for want of proper food, and that in 2010 still struggles with a literacy rate that’s below 10 per cent.

It didn’t help that the woman who is now the JD(U)’s MLA from Barachatti — she trounced her RJD rival by over 23,000 votes in Bihar’s recent assembly elections — was left to fend for herself and was put in an orphanage by her parents when she was just five. “I was only five when I was deserted by my parents, poor, landless farmers that they were. It must have been 1973.” It was also the place where she met and married Baleshwar.

Authorities at the orphanage later sent the couple to Bapu Gram to work among other Musahars like them. “A villager, Ganesh Manjhi, donated a tiny patch of land on which we built a small hut, but we had no source of income. I started stitching clothes and moved from one village to another, requesting people to give me clothes for stitching,”

Jyoti Devi remembers. It was later, after she got three acres of Bhoodan land from the government, though all barren, that things started looking brighter. She laboured hard for two decades after that and made the land cultivable. Fate finally smiled on Jyoti Devi and her husband after they learnt a new technique in farming from a Gaya-based NGO, Pradan, and experimented with it on their land a couple of years back. “The result was unbelievable,” the MLA now says. “In one katha of land, the rice yield through the new technique was over 150 kg against 30 kg that we were getting earlier.”

About 300 families, largely Musahars, in Bapu Gram and Sarvodyapuri villages now follow the technique that Jyoti Devi made popular. And these two clusters are like an oasis in a difficult, arid belt with barren land that is too hard for even thorny hedges to grow. Rainfall, too, is scanty, and there are no systems of irrigation in place yet. In fact, it was this tremendous greening of the twin villages that got Jyoti Devi noticed in the JD(U). They saw a winner in her — and a courageous one. Barachatti, her constituency, and Fatehpur, where she lives, are extremely poor and a breeding ground for Maoists. Not surprisingly, she was a target to be won over by the rebels. “Once a gang of theirs locked us in my house and asked us to join them. But I told them I work for the uplift of the most downtrodden, and through peaceful means. If they also believe in empowering this section, they should join me instead. They went away.” Those around her are deeply indebted to the feisty leader.

“We owe our empowerment to this couple,” says fellow villager Lutan Ravidas. “They dragged us out of the darkness of poverty and hunger, and showed us the way to progress. This is a big social revolution.” The change is quite visible. About a dozen boys have done their graduation, and 10 villagers have been able to buy motorcycles; a few even have colour TV sets. There is at least one mobile phone with each family. Their children go to the only middle school in the village. And they don’t eat rats any more.

TNN, Dec 29, 2010, 06.29am IST

Photo credit: Tormod Sandtorv/Creative Commons

This guest post was written by Le Ngoc Thach, president of the Dai Nghia cooperative and one of the first SRI farmers in Ha Noi province, courtesy of Oxfam America.

Watching my parents’ rice crop fail was a heartbreak I will never forget. It was 1984, and that growing season, stem borer grubs devoured our plants and destroyed our harvest. One little bug meant a lost year of rice for our family and community.

Our community in Dai Nghia, Vietnam, like countless others around the world relies on the work of small farmers like my parents to grow rice and other crops that help us feed our children and support our families’ livelihoods. For farmers like me, the tragedies of a lost harvest are a growing threat as climate change makes the search for scarce resources like water and fertile land increasingly dire. More and more we are seeing floods, droughts and punishing storms push farmers and the millions they support to the brink of subsistence.

When I saw my family’s crop crumble I knew that if we were ever going to build resilience to the daily threats to our way of life and ensure a stable source of food, we needed the training and new technology that could help us grab hold of a better future. What I didn’t know is that some of the most promising solutions come in the most accessible packages. I didn’t know about SRI.

SRI, the System of Rice Intensification, is a revolution for small farmers who are on the front lines of the fight to reduce world hunger in increasingly harsh climates. SRI helps farmers like me produce more rice at lower cost without relying on harmful fertilizers and pesticides that can decrease soil fertility and threaten clean air, soil, and water.

It’s surprisingly simple: farmers transplant younger seedlings into un-flooded soils and space them in a square pattern a bit wider than in traditional methods. Soils are kept moist rather than continuously flooded.

The plants become more resistant to pests, like the ones that killed my parent’s crops, and less fertilizer is required. Nothing fancy or expensive is needed, but in our village highly productive farmers who adopted the method increased their yields on average by 10%. And in other countries average yields are up as much as 50%. These increases have occurred while significantly cutting their water use, costs and the need for hazardous fertilizers.

When I first learned of the opportunities of SRI I was amazed by its potential. But farmers can be a stubborn bunch. I knew many would be skeptical that one seedling could produce more rice than four or five seedlings together. It was only once I saw with my own eyes the obvious benefits of SRI in the places I visited that I knew our community needed to seize this chance.

With some aggressive persuasion I was able to convince 30 families in Dai Nghia to try SRI on a 10-acre plot. Seeing our success has attracted even more converts.By 2008 all 2000 members of our cooperative were applying SRI to our community’s 420 acres of paddy land. The success has been amazing. The combination of cost savings and increased yield has increased the average farmer income by $70, about the cost of one year of school for our children or two years worth of seed for the next growing seasons.

Those who used to spend one month to tend and transplant their rice seedlings now spend between 10 to 15 days. This has allowed them to have more time to do other work such as raising livestock or growing vegetables. Many women in our community have benefited from the extra time to be sellers at the market. Many men have been able to supplement their income with additional work in construction. It is these small but significant signs of progress that give me hope that the solutions to the world’s growing food security and climate challenges can be found if we take the time to try. Right now there are nearly a billion people who go to sleep hungry every night. Many of them live in rural communities like Dai Nghia and rely on the success of small farmers like me.

I am working with Oxfam America to spread the word about SRI in my community and around the world. If our leaders are truly committed to addressing hunger they must invest the necessary resources to spread ideas like SRI that can build small farmer resilience around the globe. With this commitment, and the resources to match, we can create a million Dai Nghia’s and feed the world. Mr. Le Ngoc Thach is president of the Dai Nghia cooperative and one of the first SRI farmers in Ha Noi province. SRI, the System of Rice Intensification, is a new approach for small farmers that helps them produce more rice at lower cost without relying on harmful fertilizers and pesticides that can decrease soil fertility and threaten clean air, soil, and water. This approach is a revolution for small farmers who are on the front lines of the fight to reduce world hunger in increasingly harsh climates

From treehugger

http://blogs.oxfamamerica.org/index.php/2010/09/03/reflections-on-growing-rice-and-the-departed-in-vietnam/

Please click the link below to read this small interesting article:

SRI rice: Good for People, Planet & Profits

From 21st – 22nd January 2010, the National Workshop on Consolidation of SRI experiences, lessons & networking was orgnized in Hanoi, attracted  nearly 100 participants from Vietnam and Cambodia; from governmental agencies, academic institutes, NGOs and farmers from remote communities. 

The reports on SRI adoption in Vietnam and Cambodia were presented at the workshop, providing basical view on SRI application and development in both countries. Especially, the report on comparison of SRI and direct seeding in Vietnam was extremely noticeable with interesting data and recommendations to promote SRI application in the future.

Participants had the opportunity to discuss on how to implement the SRI program better in Vietnam, focusing on communication activities and gender mainstreaming. Other discussions on development orientation of the SRI program in the next period, particularly SRI in the climate change context and safe production (GAP), also attracted largely attention of the audience.

There were also a small exhibition of SRI products, such as rice varieties from Yen Bai, Ha Tay, minimum tillage potatoes and other communications products. Vietnamese farmers and Cambodian experts had the chance to share experiences on implementation of the model book-keeping as well as exchange valued rice varieties. 

To download the workshop presentations, please click the link below:

http://srd.org.vn/upload/Presentations_SRI_networking.rar

Information on this workshop was launched on numerous websites and newspapers. Please click the link below to read the article on the SRI networking workshop:

http://www.vietnamplus.vn/Home/Mo-rong-he-thong-canh-tac-lua-SRI-tai-Viet-Nam/20101/31984.vnplus

Mr. Le Ngoc Thach and the potatoes trees in the sacks

The president of the Dai Nghia cooperative – Mr. Le Ngoc Thach – is among the farmers who applied SRI (System of Rice Intensification) the earliest in Ha Tay province (now Hanoi). All 750 family members of the cooperate actively participated and have a confidence in the technological advancement, thus, only after 4 season crops, entire cooperative paddy land of 175 hectares are covered with SRI rice plants.

 How did we apply SRI?

“Farmers merely get their act together when they see the benefits. It is important to communicate and boost confidence” Mr. Thach shared with us the secret to success in promoting SRI. At the beginning not only ordinary farmers but even the local officials did not have a solid confidence in SRI. Prior start the first experiment in the season crop of June 2006, all farmers debated in their plenary meeting and finally came to agreement that they would try SRI and put in writing that Cooperative shall compensate for any reduction of yield for the first brave applicants. The farmers themselves also committed to fully participate in the training and follow the technical procedures. The leaders from the national and provincial Plant Protection Department (PPD) reinforced their confidence with the news that thousands of farmers in other countries have successfully applied SRI.

 The first trial covered only 4 hectare of paddy fields but all 40 families who own these land parcels participated throughout the season. They can only learn new things from doing it themselves. The next spring crop season in 2007, SRI application was expanded to 15 hectares. Two successful yields in a row encouraged Dai Nghia farmers to continue scaling up to 50 hectares in summer crop of 2007 and covered entire paddy land of 178 hectares in the spring crop of 2008. Most of the first SRI applicants subsequently become the key farmers who provides technical assistance and promote SRI adoption. The beginning was not smooth and easy. We had to ensure full and active participation of the farmers in all 6 field classes; PPD staff guides on the fields; the key farmers undertake cross-learning and cross-check visits. We had to invite as many as possible farmers to attend the Field Day. The extension workers and communal leaders were invited to the Farmer Field Day because once they see SRI, they believe in SRI, then will support and promote it. Our Cooperative particularly put woman in the center of the training investment. It is simply the best communication because daughter in laws will share the new technology with their families when they make a visit to home; and daughters tend to transplant seedling in their own fields, or will share this new technique when they’re hired to transplant. In addition, women are usually more attentive to take note during training and more duly apply new skills.

 Thach eagerly talked about techniques “It’s important to have many strong and healthy panicles. For example, one conventional tiller produces 5 panicles, one SRI tiller produces 8 – 10 panicles. Each conventional panicle contains 100 – 120 full grains while SRI panicle obtains 180 – 200 full grains. Surely, SRI is a winner”. Seeing the wonders in my eyes, Mr. Thach explained that majority of the Dai Nghia farmers were equipped with the fundamental skills in rice cultivation. More than 50% of the farmers received essential training such as IPM (Integrated Pest Management). He was very proud that most of these training were self-financed by the Cooperative and with technical support and trainers from PPD. A member only needs to contribute one kilogram of paddy per sao (360m2) per crop season. The extension fund of the Cooperative is very small, hence, any investment has to be selective and strategic.

 What are SRI benefits?

“SRI is awesome. It rightly responds to the pressures of high input costs and low margins in this tough business where many farmers have suffered from it. They heavily applied chemical fertilisers, thus, soil becomes unfertile. The overuse and abuse of herbicide spray make the rice plants become unhealthy and more susceptive to diseases and less productive”, Thach said. Mr. Thach shows me a quick calculation per sao: saving of 20,000 VND on seeds, 20,000 VND on transplant labour and 30,000 VND on sprays to make a total of minimum 70,000 VND per sao. His family has 5 members and is allocated 7 sao. SRI helps him to easily save half of a million VND for each crop; or one million VND per year[1] (approximately US$ 54 savings from 0.25 hectare) not taking into account the profit from yield increase and other saving on irrigation costs if all 5 steps of SRI are fully applied. “This money means a lot for us small farmers. If we add with money from selling chickens or a pig, we can strengthen our home; or we simply put money aside to pay tuition fee, books and clothes for children”.

 Always in the front line

Most cooperative members often tell each other “we just follow the president”. Thach feels this responsibility. He convinced his own family and applied SRI since the very first trial seasons. “We study the procedures and apply them closely that is why our paddy field is bountiful. The farmers simply believe what they see”.  Upon completion of the military service in 1981, Thach returned to his homeland and started his public life. He was appointed in the position of the Cooperative’s secretary, then head of a production unit. He also spared time for the local war veteran club. In 2001, he was entrusted by all Cooperative members and elected to become the president. He was again entrusted for second round of chairmanship in 2006 which runs until 2012.

 Innovative communication is one of the key elements to bring about success of Dai Nghia Cooperative. Different venues and channels were made available for farmers to see themselves the changes of the rice plants throughout the growing cycle, debate about them, learn from their trials and errors then they will change their mindsets and confidently put new knowledge into practice. Bearing this in mind, Dai Nghia cooperative continues tinkering with other innovative practices for winter vegetable crops such as direct seedling to grow soybean and minimum tillage potatoes. With the support from Oxfam America, Thach and his member troops start attacking a new challenge – to experiment household-level book-keeping in order to help farmers improving their simple expenditure and income calculations, thus, to better manage their farms. Improved financial transparency also helps to lessen the domestic conflicts and increase cohesion of family members.

When Thach sees me off, he points the two sacks placing on the wall. The plants inside have lush green leaves. He puts on a great grin and says “I try growing potatoes in these recycle sacks. If the harvest is good, I’ll share this new technique with my neighbours. It is a way to increase the growing areas and also makes our home greener”. Thach is indeed a man living with the quest for innovation.

Le Minh, Oxfam America

We sat down on the side of the deep yellow rice fields belonging to Bon’s family. He passionately talked about paddy rice cultivation. He said proudly “my family applies SRI in all our 6 sao” (each sao equal to 360 square meters). He did not attend any farmer field school and only learnt from his neighbours. He was not entirely certain at the beginning. The bountiful demonstration sites, however, convinced him.

Some woman members in my group still insisted to clarify the rumour that transplanting in SRI technique was difficult. Bon shared his secret that the paddy field should be well prepared. He made himself a bamboo tube to even the field and pressed down the weeds. “Man normally does not like bending their back, thus, shallow placement and wider spacing technique like SRI makes the transplanting faster and easier” – he said. His 2 person family has only himself and 26 years-old son. His wife passed away few years ago. Although the son does not live full time at home, he manages to lend a hand during the peak times.

His four SRI crops were successful on a row. We were eager to know if this crop was another success. Bon simply put on an unassuming smile “have to wait after harvest in a few days” even though the rice panicles look as if they were about to fall down because of so many full grains.

With the technical support from the Plant Protection Department under scope of Oxfam-supported project, together with few other farmer groups Bon will combine SRI and Viet – GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) to move into production of chemical-free and high-value rice.

Lê Minh, Oxfam America
Impressions from the field visit during Field Day on community-based SRI application in Chuong My district, Hanoi, Vietnam
15 September 2009

Some of the charts from the report, along with pictures from the field, are included in the slideshow below. Enjoy!

Here are some pictures from the Pro-Net 21 website:

Mr. Shimazaki from Pro-Net 21 promoting SRI at a national development conference

Local weeding methods