September 30, 2022
ARTICLERice is one of the most important staple grains consumed around the world, feeding more than half the world’s population. Profitable rice cultures today must survive on less land with less labor and require precise use of inputs such as fertilizer and water. Rice production must become more efficient, environmental-friendly and more equitable, while reducing methane emitted from production practices.
Conventional production requires significant amounts of water. A mega drought that has lasted more than a decade in the central valley of Chile, where the main rice production areas are located, threatens the sector. Climate change presents great challenges for productivity. The rice produced in the 25,000 hectares cultivated in Chile supplies half of the national needs, and there are goals to produce more, but production is threatened by the lack of required water resources.
To respond to these challenges, Chile’s national agricultural research institution (INIA) and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) have been working jointly since 2016 on helping the growers of the rice regions of Maule and Ñuble increase productivity by generating innovations in the management of water resources and other elements of rice production.
In the southernmost rice growing region of the world, the sector is now meeting these challenges through participatory research, agronomic innovation, and cooperation. Over 400 miles south of Santiago, Chile, researchers, extensionists and producers are achieving exciting results in the face of climate change and to meet growing market demands.
Over a decade ago, Chilean rice producer Nelso Badilla used traditional rice sowing methods, requiring large amounts of water and fertilizer. But a few years later, with the region facing a historic drought, he switched to a new minimum tillage system and began using practices such as dry sowing, in which rice is planted directly into soil rather than transplanting seedlings into standing water.
Badilla also is part of the participatory research group (PRG) where he works with other innovative rice farmers focusing on more sustainable processes in a project funded by the Regional Government of Ñuble called “Climate-Smart Rice.” On his land, with some twenty other rice farmers, he regularly participates in training in genetics, mechanization and monitoring for plant development, as these plants are in their reproductive process during the southern summer.
Of the 57 hectares that he has sown with rice, he has allocated 2,500 square meters to establish an innovation plot where he can try new varieties and practices. There he has attempted an agroecological system that saves up to 50% water, called SRI (System of Rice Intensification). The success of SRI depends on the implementation of practices that support the principles that underpin the system. This includes changes in conventional production methods, using precise land leveling, suitable cultivars, good crop establishment, improved water management, and effective and efficient weed and nutrient management. Implementation of SRI will also greatly reduce the methane emissions from rice cultivation through alternate wetting and drying.
The methodology is coordinated by the Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) of Chile and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), as part of a project supported by the Foundation for Agricultural Innovation (FIA).
Grower groups discuss irrigation and temperature, data and measurements, monitor test costs, and analyze daily expenses to predict results. Badilla observed, “We hope to have a variety of rice that matures earlier and uses less water, and what we want to achieve in the future is producing rice in 120 days instead of 150 days; this would considerably relieve the extensive water use that we have today, and tackle climate change.”
Karla Cordero, a researcher in the Rice Genetic Improvement Program of Chile’s NARI known as “The Rice Queen of Chile”, said that they can observe significant differences between the conventional and SRI production. “We have seen that the rice matures a little earlier, so this system would be a very good alternative not only to save water, but also to reduce agrochemical inputs and produce rice as sustainably as possible.” She added, “In partnership with IICA, our strategy is to reduce the water used in rice production. Rice is one of the crops with the highest water footprint.”
Fernando Barrera, an extension specialist for IICA in Chile, noted of the SRI process, “The key for success when proposing such a significant transformation is to co-innovate with farmers, learning and adjusting as we go along. We do this through participatory innovation groups, which have proven very important, because farmers participate actively alongside researchers and extension agents to identify problems, design solutions and ïn monitoring and evaluation.” Through co-innovation, growers can reduce exposure to risk and uncertainty, and reduce the complexity of learning new practices while consolidating information to promote adoption by dividing new practices into manageable clusters. The SRI process also fosters local variation and adaptation for unique agroecological conditions.
For Cordero, it is highly important that the transfer and development of this new research should not only be done in the experimental fields of research institutes and universities, “but directly on the farms, facilitating and expediting the research and the adoption process of these innovations.”
The next steps will be to include additional farmers in the participatory processes and share the successes and lessons learned with other rice growers in the hemisphere. IICA has directed and implemented such participatory processes in Chile and other countries of the Americas. Going forward, IICA and its partners will extend low-emissions and sustainable rice in a multi-country program of SRI with the Green Climate Fund. The goal is to ensure climate-resilient rice that reduces water use and methane emissions can become broadly adopted throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and other parts of the rice-growing world.
Karla Cordero, a researcher in the Rice Genetic Improvement Program of Chile’s NARI known as “The Rice Queen of Chile”, said that they can observe significant differences between the conventional and SRI production. “We have seen that the rice matures a little earlier, so this system would be a very good alternative not only to save water, but also to reduce agrochemical inputs and produce rice as sustainably as possible.” She added, “In partnership with IICA, our strategy is to reduce the water used in rice production. Rice is one of the crops with the highest water footprint.
Photo Credit: Fernando Barrera, IICA Extension Specialist, IICA Chile
For Cordero, it is highly important that the transfer and development of this new research should not only be done in the experimental fields of research institutes and universities,