Interview with Norman Uphoff, Professor Emeritus of Government and International Agriculture at Cornell University, former director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development (CIIFAD) from 1990 to 2005. During this time he became acquainted with the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) in Madagascar, and realised that “something unusual was going on” as farmers were obtaining average paddy yields of eight tons per hectare instead of their usual two tons. Recognising the huge potential benefits, he has been working ever since to promote the testing, evaluation and understanding of SRI. “People can overestimate my role as easily as they can underestimate it… the truth is that the actual work has been done by thousands of people around the world.”
