Identifying rice management interventions to reduce methane emissions while improving productivity is critical for climate change mitigation, adaptation, and food security. We leverage  site-based data to model combined rice yields, methane emissions, and water productivity for 83  sites across the Red River Delta, Vietnam. We test three rice management interventions with our coupled crop-soil model, characterized by Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) and other System of Rice Intensification (SRI) principles. Our simulations are forced with historical as well as future climate conditions, for a high-emission climate scenario centered on 2050.

We evaluate the efficacy of these interventions for combined climate change mitigation and adaptation under historical and future climate change. Two SRI interventions significantly increased yields (one by over 50%) under historical climate conditions while also reducing (or not increasing) methane emissions. These interventions also increase yields under future climate conditions although climate change decreases absolute yields across all management practices. Generally, where yield improved, so did crop water-use efficiency. However, impacts on methane emissions were mixed under future climate conditions. SRI principles combined with high-yielding varieties, implemented for site-specific conditions, can serve climate change adaptation and mitigation goals.

Elles sont plus de 500 femmes de la région des Savanes (nord-Togo) à bénéficier depuis lundi d'une formation sur le système de riziculture intensive (SRI).

Le système SRI permet d'augmenter la production tout en réduisant les coûts et les ressources au bénéfice des agriculteurs. Pour la FAO, promouvoir le SRI sur ces sites de production, c'est participer aussi à la production durable du riz au Togo.

Hanoi is expanding the area applying the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), striving to have 80% of the rice area applying SRI by  2030. According to the Head of the Hanoi Department of Cultivation and Plant Protection, Luu Thi Hang, SRI has now been applied to about 70% of the city's rice area. The 2025 spring crop is  the first year the Department has coordinated with Me Linh district to bring transplanters into SRI rice production in an organic, low-emission direction.

Currently, Hanoi's rice production area is about 160,000 hectares, of which the proportion of high-quality rice is expected to increase from 62% to over 80%. In addition, following the Government’s direction, Hanoi also aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Applying the SRI model not only helps reduce rice production costs by about 7-8 million VND/ha but also increases productivity by 18-20% and saves 2% of irrigation water, contributing to protecting water resources and the environment.

In Chilean fields in the Ñuble region, techniques are beginning to be adopted to reduce water consumption in crops by more than 50% and to grow in extreme weather conditions. An atypical method adapting the System of RIce Intensification (SRI) has begun to attract farmers to fields in the Las Rosas sector to witness that it is possible to produce rice with half the water resources normally used as well as reduce methane emissions. This is being studied together with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Chilean National Institute for Agricultural Research (INIA) at an experiment station in Ñuble.

They also evaluated almost 300 genotypes of different varieties, four of which have been selected for their ability to adapt to both droughts and floods. “This is revolutionary, since in many countries they are still not thinking about planting varieties of this type,” says Cordero. The intention is that this Chilean formula for adapting the SRI will be used on a large scale in the future. Efforts to measure and adapt low-emission production systems have also been applied in Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay, Panama, and Argentina.

Two years in, the SRI Tanzania project has made a significant impact on the lives of 2,880 farmers, with a 30-40% increase in yield and an approximately 90% reduction in seed usage.

The emphasis of the Norad-funded project SRI Tanzania is on the promotion of the climate-smart agriculture  System of Rice Intensification (SRI) methods. The project is currently being implemented in five districts in Tanzania by the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO) and the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI).

NIBIO’s CEO Ivar Horneland Kristensen reflected on the project’s wider potential: “On a larger scale, if all two million rice farmers in Tanzania adopted this approach, the impact would be transformative. Tanzania could not only secure its own food supply but also help feed six neighbouring countries, improving lives and bolstering regional and global food security,” he says.

Konda Mason is the founder of Jubilee Justice, a nonprofit that helps small-holder Black farmers in the South grow specialty rice with a dryland adaptation of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), a methodology originally developed in Madagascar. For Mason, rice represents a way to transform lives and reclaim the past, offering a path toward racial, economic, and climate justice. Jubilee Justice’s rice program, called the Black Farmers Cohort, currently consists of 10 farmers from Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Kentucky.

 “We are basically figuring it out year by year,” explained Erika Styger, director of the Climate-Resilient Farming Systems Program at Cornell University. Jublilee Justice is the only organization in the U.S. “actively implementing and systematically researching the [SRI] method organically, regeneratively, and in collaboration with multiple farmers,” she said.

R. Murugavel, an SRI farmer from Vadugapatti in Theni district, was felicitated by Theni Collector R.V. Shajeevana, officers and farmers associations here on Monday for bagging the State-level award for recording the highest productivity in yield. Mr. Murugavel told media persons that he had been doing farming for the last two decades. He was now growing paddy and other crops on 1.40 hectares of leased land. “I was encouraged by Agriculture Department officials in Periyakulam, who organised training programmes and camps on System Rice Intensification (SRI) technique,” he said.

Rockflower is excited to report significant progress in the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) project,  which is aimed at transforming rice farming in the Oti Region of Ghana. The project is being undertaken in collaboration with One Africa Research Development and Extension Programme (OARDEP).

Since the project's inception, OARDEP has successfully increased the number of participating farmers to 141, with an emphasis on including women and girls, who now make up 85% of the participants. This expansion is critical in a region where 87% of the population engages in agricultural, predominantly rice cultivation. The project now encompasses five communities—Bala, Mate, Avegeme, Todome, and Abrani.