It requires no expensive GM seed and no fancy fertilizers. It simply takes a change in thinking and doing. Plant rice early, make sure each plant has a good deal of room, and don't flood the paddy or field in which it grows. Cornell professor Norman Uphoff believes this practice doubles harvest results. He apparently has pissed off the World Bank-funded International Rice Research Institute with this concept because if true, this approach could effectively diminish its influence in the developing world. Some Third World farmers have been wary of this idea, too, as it goes against millennia of farm practice.
Father Henri de Laulanié, a Jesuit priest working in Madagascar, first developed the method that has so impressed Uphoff. Even though he doubts it's really necessary, Uphoff has arranged for international field trials of System of Rice Intensification or SRI, to be overseen by IRRI, Cornell and Netherlands-based Wageningen University. The trials will likely begin next year.
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