Sweet Revolution, 2009! SSI gives birth to Neo-Agriculture

Revised 29 May 2009 at 0949 Manila time

SWEET LOVE C12H22O11, Sweet Ignore C7H5NO3S. Quite simply, I like my sugar naturally sweet, not artificially saccharine. I like it harvested from the field rather than from the lab; I like it cultured on soil rather than cultured on Petri dishes or whatever. I want to be in the US, the home of the brave and the land of the free. But I don't want to be sugar-free.

I'm in the Philippines; I am a farmer's son; I am part of the island – I prefer the natural to the man-made. Today, I want to talk nicely about sweetness. Grown by mild-mannered chemists in immaculate facilities, C7H5NO3S, Saccharin is sweet; grown by tough-talking farmers on uneven farms with hard methods, C12H22O11, sugar is sweet and delectable:

These high wild hills and rough uneven ways
Draw out our miles and make them wearisome;
But yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar
Making the hard way sweet and delectable.

William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act 2, Scene III. If the long and winding road leads to sugar, it's fine with me. To me, a Philippine author, nobody beats the British Shakespeare as nothing beats the natural sugar from sugarcane.

That would be muscovado. In the late 1940s to early 1950s, as a boy in shorts going to grade school in the village of Sanchez in the sleepy town of Asingan, Pangasinan in Central Luzon in the Philippines, I had muscovado in my pocket somewhere to bring out as snack. Were we poor? Not really, but I have always been a sweet tooth; I loved the brown color and the God-given sweetness. Asingan never had a sugarcane plantation, but we always had muscovado. It must have come from Tarlac, from the Central Azucarera De Tarlac, the sugar refinery of the Cojuangcos, who own Hacienda Luisita, all of 5,000 hectares, reportedly the Philippines' largest sugarcane plantation (manilastandardtoday.com) – Tarlac Province is next to Pangasinan. I preferred the light one 'with a warm honey color and creamy fudge flavor' (billingston.co.uk). Today, raw sugar, muscovado is considered a health food. Not surprisingly, it has all the natural vitamins & minerals in sugarcane juice (sugarindia.com). I love it!

Raw sugar is a major export of the Philippines. For 2009, the country will supply 13% of the total volume the US is importing for the year (March 2009, agriculture-ph.com). How sweet!

We Filipinos are good in raising Cain, that's for sure. If you didn't know, you have not been reading the papers. Now, are we Filipinos good in raising cane? Definitely not! That's why I'm writing this long essay. But we are good producers of sugar. In crop year 2002-2003, total sugar production in the country increased by 32.6% compared to 1998-1999 largely due to higher sugar recovery by 22%; the increase can also be attributed to 'favorable climatic conditions, adoption of high-yielding varieties, improved cultural practices, increased farm inputs, and better milling facilities' (Asia Pulse, August 2003, goliath.ecnext.com). (I tried hard but I couldn't get 2007 or 2008 data on recovery rate.)

The problem there is that 'favorable climatic conditions' doesn't apply anymore; cultural practices need to be much improved still – and farm inputs need to be decreased. Our technical knowledge needs to change for the better, and not only in making things clear to the layman.

We Filipinos learned to produce sugar in Luzon for export in the 1830s (Michael S Billig, 2003, cited in World Sugar History Newsletter July 2004). Today, some 170 years later, the way we grow sugarcane leaves much to be desired.

Actually, the world over, most sugarcane farmers have much to learn about raising cane. We need a Sweet Revolution in sugarcane farming in response to the realities of climate change (global warming / global cooling), inefficient practices (like too much fertilizer), and dwindling resources (like the water table going down – our water deposits are overdrawn).

For sugarcane farmers in the dry tropics, who can they turn to, to learn to grow sugarcane much, much better? The Brazilians are the biggest sugarcane producers in the world, but Brazil doesn't have the drylands that we have. In the 2007-2008 season, total sugarcane production was estimated highest in Brazil at 491 M tons, followed by India at 348 M tons (commodityonline.com). So maybe we should go to India and learn from the Indians. After all, in history, sugar was first squeezed out of cane grown in that country (Wikipedia). Except the latest news is that, in contrast to the Philippines, last year India had a decline in recovery rate, which is the amount of sugar you get out of sugarcane (13 May 2009, commodityonline.com).

Consider: The above production figures in reality are estimates, and yield estimates change during the year as the weather changes; after all, in agriculture, harvests are only as good as the weather allows. So, expect that for any growing season, any country's sugarcane yield estimates will be revised at least 4 times: early in the year, before harvest, harvest time, then afterwards.

In agriculture as in flying, the weather is a risk. That is to say, your field as well as your flight is only as good as your weather. And why is that? Don't ask me anything more about flying, as I have a natural fear of it; but I have a natural liking of farming, and as far as I can tell, the telling effect of the weather is felt by plants via the water in the soil. Water is that important.

Mark Twain did say, 'Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.' In this age of Climate Change, I say we need to and indeed we can modify the weather, if we simply modify the water in the soil: how much is in it and how much the plants are taking out and transpiring from it. We need to practice out-of-the-box water management.

I did say we should go to India and learn. You know, we learn from mistakes, preferably those of others, preferably big. In this case, India is the biggest sugar producer in the world (ANN, ethanolindia.net) – and they must make big mistakes there. In fact, in 510 BC Emperor Darius of Persia invaded India and found 'the reed which gives honey without bees' (quoted by ANN in sucrose.com). Now then, the Indians have been raising cane for more than 2,500 years; their huge mistake is that they have been profligate with their resources when it comes to the growing of sugarcane: too much water for the canes in the field, for one thing.

And that's one of the modern Indian lessons we can learn on campus at ICRISAT at Patancheru. As far as I know, they are very serious when they say, 'We need to explore every possible approach to reduce the water input to all crops, particularly those which excessively depend on scarce resources.' That's ICRISAT Director General William Dar speaking. In other words, he is telling us we have to save on water, and so do our crops. I know him personally to be a non-traditional and out-of-the-box manager-thinker, looking for, in his own words, 'approaches wherein the resource inputs are low and yields are high.' The mantra of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, CGIAR, is 'Doing More with Less' – and ICRISAT is part of the CGIAR. Plow in less, harvest more – that kind of farming is contrary to textbook economics, isn't it? As well as textbook agriculture.

Going-against-the-grain-of accepted practices was very much in the minds of the experts when they worked out the joint project Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative, SSI. I'm referring to the World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT. The Team Leader for the SSI project is Biksham Gujja of ICRISAT – he has been a Special Project Scientist for WWF based at the ICRISAT headquarters in Patancheru, India since 2005.

In this unusual Age of Climate Change, I do not find it strange that the panda is talking to the plant. Based in Switzerland, the current top panda of WWF is President Chief Emeka Anyaoku of Nigeria; based in India, the current top crop of ICRISAT is Director General William Dar of the Philippines – these tropical minds were thinking of, if vaguely, if I may borrow from the science of fisheries, the concept of optimum sustainable yield. OSY is where you decrease the cost in general – in the case of SSI, water, fertilizer and seed in particular – and yet you do not decrease the yield – you only maintain it. SSI does OSY one better; it so happens that in SSI, while you decrease the costs, you increase the yield. Plow in less, harvest more – SSI is sugarcane agriculture at its best.

The ICRISAT-WWF partnership is a revelation. The WWF has a mandate of protecting ecosystems; considering that, 'ICRISAT is collaborating with WWF to understand and integrate the ecological concerns of agriculture,' Dar says. 'This partnership is unique, and we are looking forward to many more practical results on the ground.' Not just theories but practices.

And so, on March 2009, the ICRISAT-WWF project came up with a training manual with the long title, Sustainable Sugarcane Initiative (SSI): Improving Sugarcane Cultivation In India. Dated March 2009 and released May, the document is in pdf form, 34 pages with plenty of photographs, freely downloadable from here: panda.org.

About the training manual, Project Leader Gujja says that 'the inspiration for putting this package together is from the successful approach of SRI, System of Rice Intensification,' which has been proven to need less water and yet to yield more. And do you know who invented SRI? It was Fr Henri De Laulanie SJ who spent 34 years of his life working with the Malagasy rice farmers in Madagascar (ANN, ciifad.cornell.edu). He came up with the idea of SRI in 1983. In 1990, Fr De Laulanie, along with some Malagasy colleagues set up a non-government organization, NGO, the Association Tefy Saina, to help improve lives in Madagascar. 'Tefy Saina' means, in Malagasy, 'to improve the mind.' Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development, is now working with Tefy Saina. The Jesuits can teach even the experts a thing or two about culture and agriculture.

From SRI to SSI. The SSI approach has been tested by farmers in different climatic zones of India: Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Orissa (KV Kumanath, 07 May, thehindubusinessline.com). With very encouraging results, Gujja says he expects that the SSI practice will replace farmer's practice in sugarcane within 5 years (FnBnews, sucre-ethique.org). I expect the same for the Philippines.

In fact, SSI is the new economics of agriculture – neo-agriculture I shall call it from here on, because it's new and because I believe the concepts are applicable with other crops. This is the Sweet Revolution of 2009 I refer to in the title to this essay.

Call it SSI or call it neo-agriculture, it has been shown to work in practice, not simply in theory. One Indian farmer, PK Singh, in Uttar Pradesh found that cane yields went up to 100 tonnes to a hectare as against a 'normal' yield of 30 tonnes (ANN, 06 May, expressbuzz.com). That's an increase in yield of more than 3 times.

From the training manual, the first recommendation that caught my eye is that on water. If you follow neo-agriculture, all things being equal, your input will be up to 80% less water for irrigation and your output will be up to 50% more cane for sugar. The new economics of agriculture. Why didn't pre-climate change agriculturists think of that?! They couldn't have because they were not thinking out of the box. Now, neo-agriculturists, as well as neo-economists perforce must think of water used in production, not as a dependent but an independent variable, something that can be to the highest degree manipulated, controlled, varied or changed. This is water before the bridge.

The ICRISAT-WWF sugarcane scientists may have been thinking more of Indian sugarcane farmers than those in other lands, but that was natural. They had enough problems in India already! Neo-agriculture will have greater impact in India than the Philippines, simply because in the Land of the Maharajas, there are 36 million sugarcane farmers, and that number is more than the entire population of Canada, estimated at 32 million in 2006, 35 million in 2021 (sustreport.org). This is not to mention the multiplier effect in India on another 50 million who depend on employment generated by the 571 sugar factories and industries using sugar.

It is true that we have only 56,000 Filipino sugarcane farmers (Katharine Adraneda, 2007, newsflash.org), but even then, all of them too have to practice neo-agriculture for cane starting right now. Filipinos, neo-farmers of sugarcane? That would be sweet music to my ears.

For starters, here are some techniques prescribed for SSI / neo-agriculture for sugarcane (mostly from the SSI training manual):

(1) Raise single-budded setts in nursery. Grow the setts in trays filled with coconut coir. Being hygroscopic, the coir absorbs water 8-9 times its own weight, then slowly releases the precious liquid to the feeding roots of the setts. Also, nursery-raised settlings are excellent for filling up missing hills at anytime – the nursery settlings are of the same age as the ones growing in the field. They will mature at the same time.

(2) Transplant young settlings (25-35 days old). By then, the settlings are old enough and vigorous to withstand the shock of transplanting. Well-developed, the setts can compete with the weeds better, and can increase cane yield by up to 85% (Yukio Ishimine et al, 1994, University of the Ryukyus, rms1.agsearch.agropedia.affrc.go.jp).

(3) Space widely (5x2 feet) in main field. Rather than at1.5x2.5 ft, plant at 5x2 ft. This will result in 2 times more millable canes because the setts produce more tillers. It also reduces the number of setts needed from 16,000 3-budded setts to 4,000 single-budded setts to an acre.

(4) Apply a trash mulch. Apply sugarcane trash within 3 days of planting. Mulching is the best practice in controlling weeds. Trash mulch can also increase yield and decrease energy cost (AC Srivastava, 2002, asae.frymulti.com). I myself have written about what Edward H Faulkner calls trash farming in my 'Lesson of the Water Cycle' (20 April 2008, americanchronicle.com).

(5) Avoid flooding. Do alternate furrow irrigation to minimize water loss, or employ a drip irrigation system. Drip irrigation is where you get 80% savings on water.

(6) Go organic. Gradually switch from inorganic to organic manures and bio-fertilizers. These are natural materials and do not pose any danger to the crop or soil. Organic methods help directly reduce the carbon footprint of sugarcane farming by reducing use of farm chemicals that require fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide in their production. Organic methods also help build soil, not only add to its fertility.

(7) Do bio-control of pests. Instead of applying pesticides, learn to apply biological methods of minimizing pest damage to your crop. An example of beneficial insects? Lady bugs are predators of aphids, mites, scale insects (Erv Evans, NC State U, ces.ncsu.edu), and caterpillars (Washington State U, spokane-county.wsu.edu).

(8) Intercrop. You can intercrop wheat, potato, cowpea, French bean, chickpea, watermelon and many other crops with sugarcane with your wider spacing between rows and hills. Aside from the extra income, the intercrops will help control weed growth because of the combined denser canopy of the crops, depriving the weeds of sunlight.

(9) Ratoon. Harvest the plant crop when weather conditions are conducive for stubble growth. Cut the canes close to the ground level.

So: Neo-agriculture is not only saving on water but also saving on fertilizer, saving on seed, saving on cost, saving on time – and saving against pollution of the soil, water and air. This is a paradigm shift in thinking agriculture. I can imagine that neo-agriculture is also good for other high-value crops like hybrid rice, fancy rice, tropical fruits, vegetables, flowers whatever. This is a change in climate in understanding agriculture. Biksham Gujja imagines SSI will replace farmer's practice in 5 years in India. Beyond SSI, I am already imagining Sweet Revolution! 2009