Chris Evans, who helped get SRI started in Nepal in 2001, has sent the most recent issue of the Himalayan Permaculture Group's "Newsletter and Progress Report" for June-December 2006. This contains a report from work of the Permaculture Group in Humla region in the Far West of Nepal (http://ciifad.cornell.edu/sri/countries/nepal/nepatanewsletter.pdf).

A farmer-cooperator Manjit Tanata planted two plots of SRI rice on his farm at 2300 m elevation, it reports. After one month, he became anxious about the slow growth of the SRI plants, so he replanted one of the plots with conventional methods. However, Manjit found that his SRI plot eventually outperformed the replanted plot and all other rice plots in the area. "[Manjit] says next year he will plant more land using SRI principles and will teach other farmers how to do the same." (p. 4) There also a picture (p. 12) of the SRI rice of Shyam Shrestha, who represented Nepal at the first international SRI conference in Sanya, China in 2002.

Source: SRI-Update #10 - March 11, 2007

-Norman Uphoff

for CIIFAD SRI Group

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