Can SRI Also Benefit Larger Farmers?
Because SRI capitalizes upon potentials that already exist within rice plants and their seeds, there are no patents and no intellectual property rights limiting its use. The insights and practices of SRI are available to everyone, free of charge. Since the innovation is scale-neutral, anyone can utilize SRI methods — small, middle and large farmers. Initially, SRI was considered to be too labor-intensive — requiring more labor input per hectare — for richer farmers to be able or want to use the methods on large holdings. However, as discussed below, SRI is often labor-saving once farmers or laborers gain skill and confidence with the methods. The principles can be extrapolated and practices adapted for larger scale use. This complicates the assessment of SRI impacts on richer vs. poorer farmers. With good instruction and supervision of laborers, giving them appropriate remuneration reflecting the contribution their skill makes to SRI results), and possibly with mechanization of some
