From farmers’ fields to national policy: The Sulawesi Project

The project, Improving rice productivity in South and Southeast Sulawesi, was a collaborative venture with staff from the Assessment Institutes of AgriculturalTechnologies (AIATs) of South and Southeast Sulawesi and the district agricultural offices (Dinas Pertanian). It aimed to identify, locally adapt, and evaluate crop managementpractices that can profitably increase rice production of farmers by at least 10% and develop pathways to support wider uptake of these practices.

It ran for 3 years and ended in April 2011. By then, farmer participatory activities within four project villages were completed. Technologies that include alternate wetting and drying (AWD), integrated pest management, the IRRI Super Bag, and direct seeding using a drum seeder were locally adapted and evaluated. Appropriate weed management, ecologically based rodent management, and fertilizer management—both using a soil testkit (locally known as Pemupukan untuk Tanam Sawah or PuTS) and computer- generated recommendations from responses to 10 basic questions (Pemupukan untuk Padi Sawah orPuPS) were also benchmarked.

Farmers tried the technologies and integrated these natural resource management (NRM) practices, obtaining substantial increase in yields ranging from 0.5 t/ha to 2.3 t/ ha. The increase in mean farmer income surpassed 10%, ranging from 22% to 566%.

Farmer participation
One of the key outcomes of the project is the success of the adaptive research platform as a strategy of engaging farmers and other local stake- holders and facilitating adoption of technologies. Through this process where learning from the communities is key, the project looked at main rice farming constraints of the farmers up-front. Working with farmers in adaptive management style allowed individual farmers to decide what to test and assess, enabling them to provide feedback on the best ways to adapt NRM technologies that address their constraints.

The review and planning meetings conducted with farmers at the end of each cropping season led to better communication and implementation of community activities such as maintenance and sanitation of irrigation canals and implementation of rodent management strategies. The meetings also led to the revival of Tidung Sipulung (farmer meetings) to achieve synchronous rice planting in major rice districts in South Sulawesi. The call for this scheme improved the scheduling of water for irrigation by the district irrigation office and helped reduce problems caused by rodents and insects.

Empowered with such knowledge, most farmers began integrating at least two NRM technologies into their rice production practices. Initial analysis from a post-survey completed in November 2010 indicated benefits to farmers in project villages. Farmers in the villageswhere the project was implemented generated, on average, 1.8 million rupiah per season per ha (US$207) more than those in control villages. Specific changes in knowledge and use of technologies.

The adaptive research has disseminated knowledge not only to farmer cooperators but also to other farmers in the project villages and, to some extent, those in the control villages. Data from pre- and postsurveys in project and non-project sites attest to this.

At the community level, 55% of 223 respondents reported better growth of rice seedlings and 33% reported bett er yields. At the farm level, 32% of the farmers reported higher rice yields, whereas 22% said they became more knowledgeable about their rice farm and the surroundings.

The number of farmers adopting direct seeding almost doubled in the project villages in Southeast Sulawesi. From 26% in the 2008 wet season (WS), 48% in the 2010 WS practiced direct seeding. In the dry season (DS), the percentage of farmers adopting direct seeding increased dramatically from 1% to 49%. In comparison, only minimal change was seen in non-project villages.

While none of the farmers had heard of PuTS and PuPS in 2008, there were farmers who used these in 2010. In the four treatment villages, 7–28% of farmers had heard about PuTS, and 5–18% had used it in 2010. Similarly, 14–55% of the farmers in the treatment villages had heardabout PuPS and 10–20% had used it. At the control village of Kulahi, 18% of the farmers had heard of the tool and 7% had used them. The farmers in the three other control villages had neither heard nor used PuPS.

The number of farmers with improved knowledge on key insect pest management principles doubled compared with those in control villages. As to water management, none of the farmers had heard of AWD in 2008. However, in 2010, AWD was adopted by 19–80% of farmers within the project villages. Although signifi cantly less, about 25% of farmers in one non-project village said they have heard of and used AWD.

** Irrigated Rice Research Consortium