Food Security and Sustainable Farming continue to be constantly in the news. Climate change and the devastating conflicts it creates between communities and between countries are demanding attention as the natural world struggles to support its existing peoples and perhaps 3 billion additional people over the coming decades. Earth Links has chosen to address these issues through our work supporting the larger Agroecology Movement, with a focus on sustainable rice production, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and the System of Crop Intensification (SCI). Over 500 million people grow rice worldwide and they use substantial water resources and chemical inputs. Changes to the dominate farming practices can increase small farmer’s yields and income while decreasing water use and greenhouse emissions
For 2016 we are continuing our work with collecting designs to make farming more efficient for small rice farmers and we will be greatly expanding our work with the development of additional equipment designs and a free on-line database/library of tools for sustainable rice production. These designs are all based on equipment that small farmers, NGOs and researchers have designed and tested worldwide.
Our partners in this SRI Rice work have been SRI-Rice at Cornell University and SRI Global Inc. In Latin American Countries we have begun providing equipment designs (weeders and field markers) for SRI demonstration projects being started by IICA as an adaption/mitigation to climate change in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. This work was begun with a a generous grant from Bridging Peace and the Tides Foundation as well as donations to Earth Links from individuals and Three Americas Inc.
