PERMACULTURE
Permaculture is a system of agricultural and social design principles centered on simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and features observed in natural ecosystems. The term permaculture( as a systematic method) was first coined by David Holmgren, then a graduate student, and his professor, Bill Mollison, in 1978. The word permaculture originally referred to " permanent agriculture " but was expanded to stand also for " permanent culture ", as it was understood that social aspects were integral to a truly sustainable system as inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka’ s natural farming philosophy.
It has many branches that include but are not limited to ecological design, ecological engineering, environmental design, construction and integrated water resources management that develops sustainable architecture, regenerative and self-maintained habitat and agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems.
Even though it seems to be a good idea but it was a failure to produce the food enough for the exploding population. So it did not get such a wide acceptance.
System of Rice Intensification( SRI)
The SRI methodology was synthesized in the early 1980s by Fr. Henri de Laulanié, S. J., who came to Madagascar from France in 1961 and spent the next( and last) 34 years of his life working with Malagasy farmers to improve their agricultural systems, and particularly their rice production,.
RI is a combination of several practices those include changes in nursery management, time of transplanting, water and weed management. Its different way of cultivating rice crop though the fundamental practices remain more or less same like in the conventional method; it just emphasizes altering of certain agronomic practices of the conventional way of rice cultivation. All these new practices are together known as System of Rice Intensification( SRI). SRI is not a fixed package of technical specifications, but a system of production with four main components, viz., soil fertility management, planting method, weed control and water( irrigation) management. Several field practices have been developed around these components.
Friends of Scientifica, October 2016