The Sustainable Rice Platform: Promoting Sustainable Rice Farming at a Large Scale with Small Landholders.

Because rice production relies so much on smallholder farms, it is important to consider how to enable these farmers to use increasingly sustainable practices. The objective of the Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP) is to achieve improved environmental outcomes at both the farm and landscape levels, while simultaneously improving the economic and social sustainability of rice farming systems.  The diverse members of SRP (from private, public, and civil society sectors) have agreed upon a set of  internationally-applicable Sustainable Rice Production Guidelines and are working to provide decision tools to help growers determine which options are most sustainable in a particular situation. SRP has also identified a set of sustainability indicators to compare rice production systems and assess changes in sustainability over time. SRP is now testing several potential incentive mechanisms for making sure that smallholder farmers are able to make sustainable choices and receive economic benefit from them.