More than 500 women from the Savanes region (northern Togo) have benefited since Monday from training on the intensive rice farming system.

This intensive rice farming system (SRI) aims to improve rice production, particularly for women, while reducing the resources used. “FAO and the government have chosen rice as the main crop for our one crop, one country initiative that we call OCOP. So for Togo, rice is the main crop.

That is why FAO chose the ZAAP site in Nano where we first distributed inputs, improved seeds to all the beneficiaries here who produce them,” says Dr. Djiwa Oyétounde, FAO office manager in Togo. “We then want to teach them good rice production practices because the initiative for Togo also wants us to do green production, sustainable production. And the SRI technique is a sustainable rice production strategy, which requires fewer inputs, but above all allows the addition of organic matter which is already agroecology,” he continues.

The intensive rice farming system will especially allow women beneficiaries to improve their production by using less rice seeds, less water and less chemical fertilizers. The system is deployed in several stages, the first of which concerns seeds, seed treatment, and seed sorting. The second stage concerns the contribution of organic matter which is used in soil preparation. Women beneficiaries of the training . Then we have the installation of the nursery and will follow the transplanting after 8 to 12 days.

Once the transplanting is done, it is the water management and the maintenance of the plot that must really be respected. “At the SRI level, when you transplant, you should maintain humidity for at least 2 to 3 weeks. Whether in semi-direct or when transplanting, humidity is needed for this duration” explains Dieudonné Djagba, trainer and head of the ICAT Tandjouaré agency The added value of the SRI In the old system, producers used up to 80 kilos of rice seeds on one hectare. With this system, they will only need 10 kilos.

“Our producers will gain a lot. In the old system, it is recommended that water be in the plot permanently. But with the SRI, we wait for the water to dry out before adding more,” says trainer Djagba. There is also the use of mineral fertilizer. In the old system, you need 4 bags of NPK, 2 bags of urea. With this system, it is 2 bags of NPK, 1 bag of urea. So the producer saves on mineral fertilizer.

Concretely, the SRI system increases production while reducing costs and resources for the benefit of farmers. For the FAO, promoting SRI on these production sites also means participating in sustainable rice production in Togo.

*ZAAP = planned agricultural development zone