- Farmers in Nepal are adopting the System of Rice Intensification to improve yields and save water amidst extreme climate conditions.
- The SRI method uses younger seedlings, wider plant spacing, and minimal water usage instead of traditional field flooding to boost efficiency.
- Practitioners have doubled rice production and shortened harvest cycles, allowing them to secure better market prices while lowering costs.
- Supported by World Neighbors, this sustainable approach offers a scalable blueprint for enhancing food security and climate resilience across Asia.
Udayapur, Nepal: As extreme heat and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns disrupt global agriculture, smallholder family farmers in Nepal are turning to an innovative, water-saving cultivation method to secure their harvests and combat the realities of climate change.
The System of Rice Intensification (SRI), originally developed in Madagascar by Jesuit priest Father Henri de Laulanié de Sainte-Croix, is gaining rapid traction across rural communities like the Udaypur District. Unlike traditional rice farming, which relies heavily on continuous field flooding and intensive chemical inputs, SRI turns conventional wisdom on its head by utilizing fewer resources to achieve higher yields. The methodology is built upon four core principles: transplanting young seedlings early to promote strong root development, maintaining wider spacing between plants to reduce competition for nutrients, enriching the soil with organic matter, and applying water only as needed rather than flooding the fields.
For local farmers like Mana Maya Samal, adopting this climate-smart approach has proven to be life-changing. After testing the SRI method on a modest 360-square-foot plot, Samal compared her harvest against neighboring farmers who stuck to traditional, water-heavy practices. While conventional methods yielded just six pathi—a traditional local unit of grain measurement—Samal’s SRI plot produced 12 pathi, marking a staggering 100 percent increase in production.
Beyond doubling her yield, the technique shortened the crop cycle to approximately 130 days, which is nearly two weeks shorter than traditional rice cultivation. This accelerated growth allowed Samal to bring her produce to market ahead of the seasonal rush, securing better prices while drastically reducing her upfront production costs. Inspired by these remarkable results, Samal and a growing collective of women farmers in Udaypur have begun expanding the SRI method across all of their rice fields.
This grassroots agricultural shift is receiving vital technical backing from World Neighbors, an international development organization that works alongside local partners in Nepal. By promoting low-cost, regenerative farming practices, the organization aims to help smallholder communities boost their productivity, strengthen their climate resilience, and secure sustainable livelihoods.
As climate change continues to reshape global farming conditions, agricultural experts emphasize that resource-efficient techniques like SRI will be critical. For millions of people across Asia who rely on rice as a daily staple, these sustainable innovations offer a practical blueprint for producing more food with fewer natural resources.
