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Reports and
Publications
ANTS as FRIENDS
- Improving your Tree crops with Weaver Ants
 
by
Paul Van Mele
&
Nguyen Thi Thu Cuc
Tree crops are increasingly being
protected by agro-chemicals, endangering the environment and human
health. This manual provides practical tips to make optimal use of the
beneficial weaver ant, based on improved insights of underlying
ecological principles. Dr. Paul Van Mele, technology transfer
specialist at WARDA, and Dr. Nguyen Thi Thu Cuc, an entomologist at
the Cantho University, have combined the rich sources of scientific
and farmers' knowledge into an attractive and colourful manual. It
will appeal in particular in university students, NGO workers,
extension staff and all those engaged in communicating science to
farmers.
Organic farming
- potentials and strategies
by Dr. Mangala Rai,
Director General, ICAR
"In rainfed
systems, organic agriculture has demonstrated to out- perform
conventional agricultural systems under environmental stress
conditions... Under the right circumstances, the market returns from
organic agriculture can potentially contribute to local food security
by increasing family income".
Towards a
Learning Alliance: SRI in Orissa
Published By: Xavier Institute of
Management, Bhubaneswar
and WWF-Dialogue Project,
Hyderabad. Pp 78., September, 2007
Edited By: Dr. C Shambu Prasad, Koen Beumer
and Debasis Mohanty
About the book:
Orissa is recognized as one of the
secondary centres of origin of cultivated rice in the world. Rice
continues to be the main
crop in the state and is grown in over half the gross cropped area.
The cropping intensity though is quite low and farming is largely
subsistence and rainfed by large numbers of small and marginal farmers
with low use of inputs. Despite several interventions in
the past to improve productivity there is a mismatch between
technological efforts and farmers practices resulting in large yield
gaps and stagnant and even declining agricultural productivity.
Improving rice productivity in a state where poverty levels are one of
the highest in the country indeed has major implications for food
security. In this context SRI seemed to present an interesting
alternative to some farmers and civil society organisations who tried
it out a few years back after hearing about it from their networks.
Though a late starter, SRI has made considerable progress in the state
in recent years with many small and marginal farmers reporting
excellent results in the very first cropping season.
This book is an
outcome of an ongoing learning alliance in the state that emerged out
of a state level dialogue workshop on SRI held in June 2007. The
workshop was meant to create a learning platform for both research and
non research actors to share their experiences and insights so that
institutional support necessary for SRI uptake was faster and could
build upon the synergies among the diverse SRI actors in the state.
The volume has fourteen experiences of governmental agencies, research
organisations, SRI farmers and non governmental organisations in
Orissa - many less than a year. The introductory chapter places the
various chapters in the context of SRI and rice in India and presents
the case for a learning alliance on SRI. SRI as a continually evolving
and dynamic system with several sources of knowledge requires learning
alliances for greater information flow and to translate the micro
cultures of innovation amongst the few pioneering farmers and
organisations to a broader culture of innovation that includes state
agencies and research organisations. This volume presents details of
SRI in Orissa on the one hand and some insights on scaling up and
institutional challenges in complex systems such as SRI on the other.
Through the book the authors hope that similar experiences would be
tried out in other states apart from strengthening ongoing efforts to
scale up SRI in Orissa.
Sustainable
Development of Rainfed Agriculture in India
by John M. Kerr
This paper
addresses a wide variety of issues related to rainfed agricultural
development in India. It examines the historical record of
agricultural productivity growth in different parts of the country
under irrigated and rainfed conditions, and it reviews the evidence
regarding agricultural technology development and adoption, natural
resource management, poverty alleviation, risk management, and policy
and institutional reform. It presents background information on all of
these topics, offering some preliminary conclusions and recommending
areas where further research is needed. The analysis of agricultural
productivity growth is based on district level data covering the Indo-Gangetic
plains and peninsular India from 1956 to 1990. Disaggregating the
districts into a number of agroclimatic zones to examine predominantly
irrigated and rainfed zones separately provides insights into the
conditions that determined productivity growth.
Related to more articles:
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