The Rs 6,000 crore Ambuja Cement, which produces 22 million tonnes of cement a year, is helping rice growers in a quaint village 25 kilometres from Kolkata to increase yield of paddy.

Already an experimental sample of 272 rice growers who participated in a project with Ambuja Cement Foundation — the corporate social responsibility arm of the cement major — have experienced an increase of over 100 per cent in the yield of paddy, sown during the cropping season (kharif and rabi) of 2008.

Most of the farmers in and around Sankrail (where Ambuja has a cement plant) grow rice. “Our survey indicated most of them were not getting optimum yield from their lands. Our experts thought that the system of rice intensification (SRI) was best suited to solve their problem. This is how it began,” Pearl Tiwari, CEO of Ambuja Cement Foundation, told Financial Chronicle.

SRI is successfully used by farmers in China, Indonesia and Thailand to increase the productivity of rice cultivation by changing the management of plants, soil, water and nutrients.

The project covered 272 farmers from 30 villages. “Experts began interacting by early 2008 and actual cultivation under SRI began by mid-2008. Early results already indicate an over two-fold rise over the traditional method. Also, SRI uses one-tenth of the quantum of seeds as compared to the conventional method. This boosts their income,” said Tiwari. At present, 191 acres of land are under SRI cultivation in Sankrail and Farakka.

SRI does not require the purchase of new seeds or the use of new high-yielding varieties. And while chemical fertiliser and agrochemicals can be applied with SRI, their use is not required as organic materials can give even better results.

Since plant populations are greatly reduced with SRI, seed costs are cut by 80-90 per cent, and because paddy fields are not continuously flooded, there are water savings of 25 to 50 per cent, farmers said.

“Since yield increases are usually 50 to 100 per cent, the returns to labour can be great. The profitability of rice production can be increased when yield goes up with a reduction in the costs of production. As farmers gain skill and confidence in SRI methods, their labour input decreases, and with time SRI can become labor saving compared with conventional rice-growing methods,” Tiwari said.