By Niamh Leonard-Bedwell

Tilda claims to have helped increase the annual rice yields of a group of north Indian farmers by 7%.

It worked with 1,270 farmers in northern India in 2023, teaching them the alternate wet and dry (AWD) irrigation technique for more sustainable rice growing as part of an ongoing programme.

Traditional rice farming uses between 3,000 and 5,000 litres of water per kilogram of rice, as the crop is usually grown in permanently flooded fields. This method produces large amounts of methane as a byproduct of the anaerobic process that takes place when rice plants grow under water.

In order to reduce water use and the amount of methane released into the environment, the International Rice Research Institute developed AWD irrigation, which allows fields to largely dry out between floods.

After learning the AWD technique, farmers taking part in Tilda’s programme were able to reduce the amount of electricity used for pumping irrigation water by 27% lower per tonne of rice grown, compared with non-participants.

Additional benefits

The findings are presented in Tilda’s 2023-2024 Impact Report, which outlines details of the farm advisory services and assistance it provides to a total of 2,500 farmers globally.

This assistance includes the use of Integrated Pest Management (IPM), an approach that moves away from a mainly pesticide-based system to make greater use of alternative forms of pest control.

Pesticide use and the associated environmental impact of pesticide use, as measured by the EIQ indicator, was found to be “significantly lower on farms using AWD with integrated forms of pest management (IPM) compared with farms outside the programme that are not using any form of IPM”, according to the report.

Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions were also 36% lower per tonne of rice grown on farms participating in Tilda’s sustainability programme, compared with farms outside of it.

Cost savings

“Through AWD, we’re proving that it is possible to produce rice in a way that is not only more sustainable but also beneficial for farmers, who are also seeing both cost savings and improved yields as a result of using this method,” said Tilda MD Jean-Philippe Laborde.

“Through this important work, we believe we are showing not only what can be achieved in northern India, but also across the global rice industry.

“We are now four years into our AWD programme and are delighted with the strong progress we have made,” Laborde said. 

“Our goal is to share what we’ve learned and encourage the entire rice industry to adopt practices that benefit both people and the planet.”

Published Date: October 24, 2024