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Irrespective of its influence on agricultural productivity, the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has certainly increased discussion over optimal rice cultivation practices, with many agricultural development practitioners at odds with a good deal of the established rice research community. To date, much of the debate over the putative benefits of SRI has been theoretical or speculative and has not persuaded adherents on either side. In aggregate, sufficient empirical data now exist to put SRI performance in a meaningful context by evaluating the productivity of SRI with respect to conventional best management practices (BMP). For this retrospective analysis, 40 site-years of SRI versus BMP comparisons were assembled into a common database. In addition to data from Madagascar where SRI was first conceived, findings from a broad geographic region were compiled including studies from Nepal, China, Thailand …