Minh Le is the Associate Country Director of Oxfam in Vietnam.

Rice is life. It is true for me and for millions of farmers and families living in the riparian countries of the Mekong River.

Almost a decade ago, I got to know about the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) via a local organization in Cambodia. I was intrigued by its potential to not only improve rice production, but also to offer solutions to the complex problems and constraints faced by smallholder farmers.

The strengthening SRI movement has become a popular topic recently in development circles and with politicians simply because everyone cares about finding a way of feeding more people and, at the same time, improving environmental sustainability. SRI literature saw a spike of scientific and public interest in the last 10 years. Some 250 scientific articles have been produced in comparison to a few dozen in the previous decade. The March 2013 issue of the journal, Farming Matters, (published by ILEIA, the Centre for learning on sustainable agriculture) is exclusively devoted to SRI. I agree with the editors that SRI is indeed about more than just more rice.

In 2006, Oxfam initiated a regional initiative to support smallholder farmers in the lower Mekong basin, catalysing SRI innovations in rice production. In Vietnam “Simple and Effective” is the motor to promote SRI. Five year later, it was reported that one million farmers (some 10% of the total national farming population) have adopted SRI, following a partial or full set of its principles. It was reported by the Plant Protection Department under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development that SRI adoption covered 16% of the rice land in the North and 6% of the rice land in the country overall. Though progress is being made, it is obvious that the task is not yet completed.

Vietnamese farmer Hoang Thi Lien, right, talks to Nguyen Van Do, at his SRI farm in Dong Phu commune, My Duc district, Ha Tay province. Lien is a core farmer that gives instruction for and help other farmers to cultivate SRI rice. Photo: Chau Doan/ Oxfam America

There are still millions of farmers in Vietnam and hundreds of millions elsewhere who should have the opportunity to learn about and gain confidence in agro-ecological methods such as SRI. Multi-institutional and multi-level collaborations have been the key to success of SRI scaling up in Vietnam and many attempts have been made to try similar farmer-centered approaches with other crops. I see the SRI movement as opening doors for more cooperation and genuine support for farmers, as research, extension, and practice make progress together.

So let’s move the SRI debate beyond right and wrong and focus our energy and scare resources on better addressing farmers’ risk horizons, their appetite for change, and their aspirations towards improved rice productivity. In Vietnam, finding local solutions to food production is essential to eliminating hunger and providing insurance against rising food prices.

Rice is life and it is at the nexus of urgent global challenges for meeting food needs with less land per person, diminished water availability, rising energy costs, and adverse climate changes.  It is not an over-dramatization that our planet’s future will be influenced to no small degree by how this essential grain is grown in the decades ahead.

Barry Shelley is Oxfam America’s global agriculture and climate change advisor. 

A recent story by Dan Charles on mysteries related to the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) highlights some critical issues in current SRI debates. First, intensified labor demands can be an obstacle to initial SRI adoption in some locales. Second, since development work must be contextual, we must be cautious in broadly applying research findings from one context. Third, the analysis of agriculture innovation must extend beyond agronomic techniques and productivity measures to impacts on households and communities and the incentives or disincentives they generate.  Unfortunately, on this last point, Charles’ story did not discuss the fact that monetary incentives are not the sole reason why farmers adopt SRI. Non-monetary benefits also play a role.

Vietnamese farmer Hoang Thi Lien, 53 at her SRI (system of rice intensification) farm in Ha Tay province, Vietnam. Chau Doan/Oxfam America

After an impressive record of SRI adoption in Vietnam, Oxfam’s initiatives to support SRI in Haiti’s Artibonite Valley encountered varying challenges. One obstacle to adoption in Haiti has been the increased labor demands, similar to what the study by Takahashi and Barrett found in Indonesia.  In contrast, labor intensification did not pose a significant constraint in Vietnam, in part because it is minimized after farmers have become more efficient in SRI techniques. So, yes, increased labor demands can be a significant factor in SRI adoption and impact.  But how labor “acts” in these dynamics varies between locales. It will depend on many factors, including average parcel size, rural labor supply, alternative labor opportunities, and the point of comparison—i.e. the labor demands of the traditional growing practices under local conditions.  Every experience of SRI is not the same.

However, Takahashi and Barrett’s research (pdf) is very important, welcomed, and highly relevant.  They are correct that there has been little solid evidence on how SRI adoption affects household income and household welfare more broadly. In an effort to address this gap, Oxfam recently initiated a rigorous SRI impact evaluation study in Haiti in collaboration with researchers Michael Carter and Travis Lybbert of the University of California at Davis. They were selected, in part, because they had not been immersed previously in the SRI debate and could offer a measure of independence.

In the village of Quatorzieme, Oxfam is helping a small group of women experiment with innovative practices of growing rice known as System of Rice Intensification or SRI. Brett Eloff/Oxfam America

Unfortunately, Charles’ article leads toward a more simplistic conclusion than is warranted.  The story focuses on reported dis-adoption rates and on Takahashi and Barrett’s demonstration that SRI adoption does not lead to any significant increase in household income in their study area. However, in their research these authors go on to ask:  “If there is no observable economic gain, why have farmers shifted from the conventional rice cultivation practices to SRI in the first place and only 18 percent of those who had experimented with SRI had disadopted [sic] by the time of our survey?”  (page 32)  They suggest that additional incentives for SRI adoption include preferring on-farm over off-farm work, not needing to travel for employment, being closer to home for child care, cultural values of keeping women closer to home, and/or more leisure time. In other words, there must be net household welfare gains—gains significant enough to persuade farmers to adopt SRI for the long-term—even if there is no income increase. But their data does not allow further analysis of those non-monetary benefits. The picture is more complex and promising than the story implies.

Strong evidence supports claims that SRI offers multiple monetary and non-monetary benefits both to adopting farmers and to society at large: increased yields and land productivity that offer smallholder farmers the possible welfare gains suggested above, that stabilize rural communities and that provide increased food production; decreased green-house gas emissions; water savings; and decreased chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. So, while we do need to understand SRI adoption incentives and household impacts, we also hear an additional set of questions: How can we better mobilize knowledge and resources to create the conditions required for increased adoption of SRI and other agro-ecological methods? Why is there not more private and public investment in SRI? What policies and strategies do we need to advocate for SRI? How do we recognize the social benefits of SRI and generate incentives accordingly? How do we help farmers get past the initial increase in labor demands, instead of letting that be a game stopper?

SRI is too promising to leave its future to the whims of an ideological and narrow debate. Years ago my mentor Thomas McCollough, a social ethicist, taught me the importance of asking the right questions.  Let’s ask those right questions—all of them.

Trade can be an engine for development if its benefits reach those living in poverty. Oxfam has argued for this for more than a decade. Philip Stevens of the Emerging Markets Health Network, in a Wall Street Journal Asia op-ed at the end of last year, calls this “NGO scaremongering.”

Stephanie Burgos, Senior Policy Advisor for Trade

Stephanie Burgos, Senior Policy Advisor at Oxfam America, responds in this letter to the editor.

***

The TPP Would Be a Bitter Pill

Philip Stevens’s diagnosis of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement and Oxfam’s perspective on it (“Free Trade is Good for Health” op-ed, Dec. 18) is plain wrong.

Oxfam has long been a supporter of trade for development and economic growth, provided rules are fair for rich and poor countries alike. The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), however, only favors multinational drug companies through new intellectual property (IP) rules at the expense of the health of millions in developing countries.

Generic competition, which begins when monopoly protection for medicines expire, is the way countries can reduce medicine prices. New IP rules delay generic competition and thus low-cost medicines in developing countries. Poor people go without treatment or make dire economic sacrifices.

The World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines avoids recommending patented medicines, despite their public health value, because they are too expensive. Mr. Stevens cites the list as evidence that patents don’t matter, when it is precisely a testament to the unfairness of excessive IP rules. Suggesting that developing country patients should be satisfied by access to a limited range of older treatments is outrageously unfair.

Mr. Stevens defends data exclusivity because it generates profits for drug companies, but fails to mention its negative impacts on public health. Oxfam’s research in Jordan, which introduced data exclusivity in 2001 under a U.S. trade agreement, showed the measure significantly contributed to a 20% increase in medicine prices. Other rules demanded by the U.S. will also invite abuse of the patent system by drug companies, tie the hands of governments who want to negotiate prices with drug companies, and distract drug regulators from focusing their efforts on ensuring the safety of medicines.

Intellectual property rules must be calibrated to ensure incentives for innovators are balanced with broader public interests. The IP rules proposed by the US in the TPP upset this balance. This is not a matter of perception. It is right there on paper at the negotiating table.

Five years ago, the U.S. revised trade agreements with Peru, Panama and Colombia to limit the damage the agreements could wreak to public health, but deep-pocketed special interests are now holding the U.S. back.

Here’s to hoping that won’t be the case in 2013.

Let me let you in on a secret; the United States needs help. In fact, as rich and powerful as the United States is, we still have problems we can’t solve on our own. In a world where violence, scarcity, and poverty ignore borders, we need the help of people living in other countries to help make our world better, safer, and more prosperous.

The good news is that there are a lot of people out there who want to work with us. They don’t work with us out of charity or because they necessarily like us. They work with us because we want the same thing: a world that can fight back against problems like poverty, injustice, and disease.

Jacqueline Morette is a Haitian farmer and a partner in fighting poverty. Photo by Sarah Peck/Oxfam America.

Jacqueline Morette is one of these people. Jacqueline is a farmer from rural Haiti. She co-founded an organization that helps poor women farmers grow more food and reach new markets to sell their products. Under her leadership, members are earning more, feeding their families, and becoming self-sufficient.

Another is Kim Nay Heang, a 57-year-old entrepreneur from Cambodia who learned how to transform her household fishpond into a profitable business venture. With this income, Heang helped her family survive a spike in food prices—and provided an education for her five grandchildren.

Or Jose Ordoñez, a Honduran corn farmer who struggled to provide for his three children. After learning to plant more profitable crops like papaya and transporting the fruits to a market where they fetch a good price, he is now earning enough to secure his family’s future.

All these people are working hard and taking risks, trying to make their communities, their countries, and the world, better. And all three of these people—Jacqueline, Kim, and Jose—have partnered with the US government to fight poverty and injustice.

The US is right to invest in partners like Jacqueline, Kim, and Jose. Real development depends on hard work by people like these, trying to change their own societies for the better. But every few years, Congress has second thoughts; they slash foreign aid to the bone, and yank the rug out from under the very people who are busting their tails to help us build a better, safer, more prosperous world.

It doesn’t have to be this way. US development assistance programs are less than one percent of the US federal budget. As one advocate put it, “Cutting foreign aid to address the budget crisis is like getting your hair cut in an effort to lose weight.” And while cutting development assistance won’t even begin to solve our fiscal problems, it will devastate people like Jacqueline, Kim and Jose who are trying to do the right thing. And it will cost lives.

Jacqueline, Kim and Jose, and millions of other people around the world working to fight poverty, hunger and injustice, don’t have fancy well-heeled lobbyists fighting for their interests in the craziness that is Washington today. But with their hard work, a little bit of our money, and both of our persistence, we can get there. We just need the courage to not give up the fight.

Porter McConnell is Oxfam’s policy and advocacy manager for Aid Effectiveness.

Once in a while, the development and democracy communities have a “Eureka” moment:

• Development types are realizing that poverty + stuff does not = development. Development is a relationship that we can support, it’s not a set of items that poor countries are lacking.

• Democracy types are realizing there’s no way to build country systems short of actually using them. Developing country governments are like muscles: if the US and other donors leave them to atrophy because we can’t “trust” them, they will never become strong.

In part because of Arab Spring, the democracy and development communities are seeing anew that their fates are inextricably linked. Yesterday and today, USAID is holding a conference called Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance 2.0. Speakers from USAID Administrator Raj Shah to Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment are calling for better integrating US development and democracy efforts.

It’s about time: in the last 10 years, the pendulum of donor opinion has swung from excluding governments entirely and funding civil society to focusing entirely on supporting governments and downplaying the importance of civil society. Heading into the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan this fall, the development community needs to avoid the temptation to engage in these wild pendulum swings. Both government and civil society have to be engaged in order to see any lasting development impact.

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