When rice farmers started producing yields nine times larger than normal in the Malian desert near the famed town of Timbuktu a decade ago, a passerby could have mistaken the crop for another desert mirage.
Rather, it was the result of an engineering feat that has left experts in the nation in awe — but one that has yet to spread widely through Mali’s farming community.
“We must redouble efforts to get political leaders on board,” said Djiguiba Kouyate, a coordinator in Mali for German development agency GIZ.
With hunger a constant menace, Malians are cautiously turning to a controversial farming technique, known as rice intensification, to adapt to the effects of climate change.
The method, pioneered in Madagascar in 1983, has raised hopes that Mali’s small-scale rice farmers might be able to increase their productivity to meet the country’s gargantuan appetite for the grain.
Consumption of the staple stood at about 72kg of rice per person in 2014, according to the latest data Mali’s National Directorate of Statistics has made public — and demand is continuing to grow.
Dubbed the “system of rice intensification” (SRI), the new rice production method involves planting fewer seeds of traditional rice varieties and taking care of them following a strict regime.
Seedlings are transplanted at a very young age and spaced widely. Soil is enriched with organic matter and must be kept moist, although the system uses less water than traditional rice farming.
SRI is used on both irrigated and non-irrigated land, meaning it is possible to cultivate rice even in Mali’s desert, pilots conducted by the US Agency for International Development have shown.
Up to 20 million farmers use rice intensification in 61 countries, including in Sierra Leone, Senegal and the Ivory Coast, said Norman Uphoff, a senior adviser at the SRI International Network and Resources Center at Cornell University in the US.
Rice plants grown following the method live longer because, given more space, more oxygen and less water, their roots grow bigger and deeper, so they are more resilient to drought and do not deteriorate under flooding, he said.
However, despite its success, the technique has been embraced with varying degrees of enthusiasm from country to country.
That is because it competes with the improved hybrid and inbred rice varieties that agricultural corporations sell, Uphoff said by telephone.
“Corporate agriculture has a huge stake in this,” he said. The new technique is “not good news for the brand breeders and the seed companies.”
Interest in SRI has mounted as droughts and erratic rainfall become more common, adding urgency to efforts to create a steady stream of food from farmland to cooking pots.
Mali is West Africa’s second-largest rice producer, but it still imports 18 percent of its rice annually, said Abdoulaye Koureissi, national coordinator for a rice farmers platform.
Imports prevent local production from reaching its full potential, he said.
And longer droughts and other forms of unpredictable weather are destroying an ever-larger share of crops across the country, where nearly half the adult population suffered from stunting as children due to malnutrition, according to the UN.
Malian authorities are looking for ways to reduce imports and become self-sufficient in rice, Kouyate said.
For Faliry Boly, who heads a rice-growing association, the prospect of rice becoming a “white gold” for Mali should spur on authorities and farmers to adopt rice intensification.
The method could increase yields while also offering a more environmentally friendly alternative, including by replacing chemical fertilizers with organic ones, he said.
What is more, rice intensification naturally lends itself to Mali’s largely arid climate, he said.
Rice intensification uses up to 40 percent less water than traditional rice-growing methods, Kouyate said.
This year, about 100 small-scale farmers were trained in the method through a GIZ-backed effort, Kouyate said, and hundreds more have been trained in other areas of Mali.
Yet, rice intensification has remained largely experimental, with no governmental policy in place to bolster the adoption of the practice, Kouyate added.
Another obstacle is that many farmers using techniques hundreds of years old are often reluctant to try new ways of growing rice, experts said.
Koureissi said he has also seen farmers discouraged by the time investment required to learn the new method, teach it to their farmhands and then practice it.
Rice intensification “asks for a lot of time spent in planting rice, because the seedlings are planted very young, eight to 15 days old, maximum,” he said.
Additional reporting by Sebastien Malo in New York
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US