CORIGAP: Closing Rice Yield Gaps in Asia

Rice is the staple food for some 4 billion people worldwide. The availability of low-priced rice is crucial for the food security of 400 million poor people who reside in rice-eating countries

The ‘’Closing Rice Yield Gaps in Asia with Reduced Environmental Footprint (CORIGAP) project’’ started in 2012 with the aim of improving food security and gender equity and alleviating poverty through optimizing productivity and sustainability of irrigated rice production systems.

The practices were integrated to not only increase yield but also increase resource-use efficiency (e.g., water, fertilizer) and reduce their related negative environmental impacts (e.g., soil and water pollution, water depletion, greenhouse gases). These changes were then embeded in a framework of sustainable rice value chain upgrading, linked to markets and policy guidelines. Moreover, in the second phase of CORIGAP, a special focus was put on specific social, economic conditions or constraints faced by smallholder men and women farmers as well as on knowledge factors that play a crucial role in the adoption of best practices.

For this third, short phase (April 2021- December 2022), the specific Objectives are:

Outcome 1: Impact and outcomes of and lessons learned from previous phases of CORIGAP documented, published and disseminated.

Outcome 2: Pathways for the agroecological transition towards sustainable food systems designed

Outcome 3: Knowledge products and enhanced capacity used by donors, policy makers, other decision makers and project partners; further scaling of project outputs by partners and transfer of learnings to other regions

Outcome 4: National partners and other projects foster innovations that show positive impact on women and youth.

Principaux résultats attendus:  

·  2 PhD thesis (Swiss and national) completed

·  Endline surveys on impact completed

·  Studies on impact of project outputs on
   gender conducted in Thailand

·  Training modules of key project outputs
    available to partners for use (2022)

-  CORIGAP impacts at end user and at
    system level documented and shared
    with general audiences as book, publications
  , printed materials and through webinars and homepages

Principaux résultats antérieurs:  

By December 2020, the project’s efforts on promoting best management practices for lowland intensive rice reached more than 750,000 farmers across six Asian countries (CORIGAP target was 500,000 by 2020). About 120,000 farmers have adopted best practices and increased their rice yield by 11-20%, and profit by 15-25% (target 125,000 by 2022).

In Vietnam, farmers who followed the proposed Best Management Practices; yield were higher than control fields by 0.5 to 1.0 t/ha, pesticide use reduced by 50%, and net income increased by 7-9% in Winter-Spring and 7-18% in Summer-Autumn.

The Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP), which is a multi-stakeholder platform with representation from 100 private sector, government, NGO, and academic organizations haas released a new set of global standards and principles for sustainable rice production.

The National Agriculture an Research departments in the 6 countries

World Bank (WB) projects

Diverse private sector companies

The sustainable rice platform (SRP)

ACIAR, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research

Phase 3 01.04.2021 - 31.03.2023   (Completed)