Deep Roots

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Farmers lead a culture of innovation

Half of the world’s people consume rice. An estimated 1 billion people

are engaged in growing rice. Most of them are poor, with women doing

more than half of the work. In 2002 Oxfam started promoting the

System of Rice Intensification (SRI), an agroecological method to help

women and men in rice farming communities improve their food and

income security and increase their resilience to shocks and stresses.

As of 2013, more than 1.5 million smallholder farmers in groups

supported by Oxfam’s partners in Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam

have benefited from SRI using both improved and local rice varieties.

Learning SRI and collaboration around its adoption has given

farmers a greater confidence in public spaces and in experimenting

with new methods. Farmer-led practices such as the hand-held

rotary weeder in Cambodia, the System of Teff Intensification in

Ethiopia, the minimum-tillage potatoes method in Viet Nam, and

home gardens in Sri Lanka are proving effective and addressing

time-poverty for women. SRI is now adopted in more than 50

countries around the world. The journey of SRI demonstrates that

with a relatively simple grass-roots innovation on hand, small-scale

farmers can make a world of difference.

Empowering people

As a global organization working in more than 90 coun-

tries, Oxfam works directly with communities to create

sustainable local food systems while also tackling underly-

ing root causes that perpetuate poverty. At all levels, the

key lies in people, in building their power to claim their

basic human rights. Farmers who can claim their rights

can access and control the resources they need to grow

nutritious food that feeds their families and benefits local

economies.

What does this look like in practice? In its 2010/11

edition of

The State of Food and Agriculture

report, the

Food and Agriculture Organization stated that if women in

rural areas had the same access to land, technology, finan-

cial services, education and markets as men, agricultural

production could be increased and the number of hungry

people reduced. This would not require opening up more

area for agricultural production. It would also not require

investing in expensive technologies. Instead, it is a ques-

tion of gender equality: of changing mindsets and cultural

norms, of changing laws and policies so that women have

the same rights as men to buy, sell or inherit land, to access

credit, and so on.

Growing food more sustainably

Likewise, there is a lot that is already known about how

to grow food in a more sustainable way. There is ample

evidence that the industrial model based on intensive use

of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides is unsustainable,

contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and destroy-

ing biodiversity. Although investments in agriculture are

increasing, the 2013 United Nations Conference on Trade

and Development noted that current priorities are still

SRI instructor farmer Tran Thi Lien checks the rice fields in Dong Phu commune, My Duc district, Hanoi province with her neighbour and local extension worker in Viet Nam

Images: Le Minh/Oxfam America