Thanks to Norman Uphoff, the SRI plan has spread from Madagascar to many places around the world. Norman Uphoff was director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York from 1990 to 2005. In 1993, Uphoff met officers from Association Tefy Saina, the non-governmental organisation set up in Madagascar in 1990 by de Laulanie to try SRI. After trying the SRI plan for three years, Malagasy farms that made about 2 tons/hectare improved to about 8 tons/hectare. Uphoff believed the SRI plan works, and in 1997 started to tell groups in Asia about SRI. Uphoff estimates that by 2013 the number of small farms using SRI had grown to between 4 and 5 million.