|The production and dissemination system for rice seed|
|Farmers’ choice of variety in your district or village|
|Understanding how farmers make choice of varieties to grow.|
|Depending on your country, farmers may be cultivating from 0.2 hectares to more than 5 hectares.
Rice is a crop that can grow under non-flooded soils or flooded soils. The flooded plots generally have bunds for holding the water. These may be irrigated or rainfed and experience periods of flooding and drought. The rice may be photoperiod sensitive or insensitive. There may be one or two crops of rice a year. Where there is more than one crop grown in a year (rice-rice or rice-nonrice), you will need to understand the cropping pattern and the determinants of the cropping pattern. In a small geographical area, there may be several varieties of rice growing, and the farmer will have good reasons for choosing each variety.
|Activity 1: You will do this in a single village. With a small farmer group, draw a map of the village and show the agriculture land on which rice is grown. Ask the farmers if there are different names for the sections of land around the village and why they consider each section different. Ask farmers about the cropping patterns on the different types of land. For each section of land, list the different varieties that are grown and why these varieties are grown. For each variety, ask the farmers what percentage is grown in each section. You now have the knowledge of the names of each variety, the approximate percent of each variety grown, and why farmers grow each variety.
Now, you have some idea of why farmers choose a particular variety.
Note! a new variety needs to replace an existing variety or existing crop. Therefore, understanding the reasons why a farmer is growing a particular variety is the beginning of introducing a new variety. This is part of matching a new variety to your area.
|Activity 2: This is for small group discussion: Do you have examples of introducing a new variety that did not fit the farmers’ cropping system? Do you have examples of introducing a new variety that matched the farmer’s cropping system?|
|Defining what you do and getting together with the right people.|