Bayer plans to bring Direct-Seeded Rice system to 1 Mn hectares in India by 2030

Potential to transform India’s rice production: 75 per cent of total rice cultivation area expected to shift to direct-seeded rice practices by 2040.

Bayer has announced the introduction of its direct-seeded rice (DSR) system at the 6th International Rice Congress in Manila. Moving from transplanted puddled rice cultivation to direct-seeded rice can help farmers to reduce water use by up to 40 percent, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by up to 45 percent and reduce farmers’ dependence on scarce and costly manual labor by up to 50 percent. The introduction of the DSR system is fully in line with Bayer’s recently announced approach to regenerative agriculture which will enable farmers to produce more while restoring more.

Driven by these advantages, DSR has the potential to be transformational with 75 percent of total rice fields in India expected to switch to this cultivation method by 2040, in comparison to roughly 11 percent today. By 2030, Bayer plans to bring the DSR system to one million hectares in India, supporting over two million early-adopter smallholder rice farmers through its DirectAcres program.

Already underway, DirectAcres has seen considerable success with 99 percent of Indian farmers achieving successful plant establishment and 75 percent a higher return on investment compared to rice grown using the conventional transplanted method. Bayer plans therefore to introduce DirectAcres in other rice growing countries in Asia Pacific, starting with the Philippines in 2024.

“We are building entire systems based on regenerative agriculture practices that create value for farmers and nature alike and that help address the issue of global food security,” said Frank Terhorst, Head of Strategy & Sustainability at Bayer’s Crop Science division.

Traditionally, rice farmers first grow seedlings in nurseries before transplanting them in ploughed, levelled and flooded paddy fields. Over the subsequent months the water level must remain constant to ensure that the plants establish and grow. Shortly before the harvest the farmer drains the field. Some 80 percent of the world’s rice crop is today produced using this method.

Now, using advanced R&D capabilities, Bayer is designing climate-resilient rice hybrids with higher yields that can be sown directly in the soil and bred specifically for the different farm environments. By removing the standing water, machinery can perform much of the otherwise time consuming and arduous, manual farming practices. The reduced dependence on excess water – used partly to prevent weeds – means access to crop protection solutions will be key to the transformation. To address this, Bayer is developing new crop protection solutions including a new rice herbicide to ensure a successful and durable weed management program for the direct-seeded rice system.

DSR has the potential to change this by reducing the water use and the GHG emissions created by methane emitting bacteria that thrive in the standing water. The reduction of on-farm manual labor – through mechanization – addresses the issue of continuous labor shortage in the Indian countryside due to rapid urbanization. This has been recently confirmed in the Farmer Voice study supported by Bayer: 22 per cent of Indian smallholder farmers see labor costs as one of the biggest challenges to their operations.

At the 2023 UN Water Conference, Bayer committed to improving water use by 25 percent per kilogram of rice produced by its smallholder farmer customers enrolled in the DirectAcres program by 2030. Bringing direct-seeded rice to one million hectares by 2030 also contributes to the company’s sustainability goals of reducing customers’ on-field GHGs per kilogram of crop produced by 30 percent and empowering 100 million smallholder farmers to sustainably increase their productivity, improve the quality of their produce and enhance their livelihoods.

Potential to transform India’s rice production: 75