Planeteers Strike Again!

The Planeteers, Chiang Mai International School's environmental club, returned to the ECHO Asia office on Friday, March 26 to help upgrade the container and perennial vegetable garden. Braving hot afternoon temperatures, the 10 young people and their adviser, Mr. ElJay Erickson, replanted approximately a dozen containers in which several species of shade-loving edible plants such as basil, pandanus leaf, fiddlehead fern, sawtooth coriander (Eryngium foetidum), taro (edible stems) and leaf pepper, as well as a few medicinal herbs are being grown on the front porch of the office.

Along the wall of the office, another group of students, under of the supervision of Mr. Chanchai, dug and mulched a raised bed in which perennial vegetables such as sweet leaf (Sauropus androgynus), cha-om (Acacia pennata) and leaf pepper (Piper sarmentosum) are growing in partial shade.

The demonstration looks 100% better thanks to the Planeteers. Thanks again for the hard work guys!

Rapid Multiplication of Bananas

In northern Thailand there's lots of demand for banana stalks these days. In many parts of Asia banana stalk is a traditional feed for pigs. After slicing up the stalks, farmers usually boil them to increase digestibility. Fed alone, such plant material isn't very nutritious. So stalks are usually mixed with other more nutritious feeds such as rice bran, corn, papaya fruit, kitchen scraps and wild vegetables. Otherwise, they mainly serve to fill hungry animals.

In recent years, growing numbers of farmers have been adopting a proven practice of fermenting banana stalk with molasses and a little salt. Reducing the need for fuel to cook the stalks, the fermentation process boosts the presence of digestible bacteria in the silage, making stalks considerably more nutritious. And mixed with smaller amounts of nutritious local feed or supplemented with a little commercial pig feed, fermented banana stalks offer a cheap, nutritious component for small-scale pig production. This, in turn, helps to boost small farm income.

But with every innovation comes another challenge. With demand for banana stems growing, in some areas, stalk scarcity is becoming an issue. So can the production of these plant materials be boosted somehow?

Years ago, ECHO Development Notes ran a story on rapid multiplication of bananas (RMB). Basically, banana stems are mangled a bit to prompt the main corm (underground stem/root system) to produce more daughter corms and, ultimately, transplantable suckers. And a few years later, EDN reported on another rapid banana multiplication approach whereby banana corms are dug up, trimmed and scored just so to injure meristems before being placed in plant beds to stimulate the production of a lot more plantlets. So the idea is, one way or another, to stimulate the production of a lot more plantlets (suckers) which can be transplanted to establish more clumps of usable banana stalks.

Unable to find any references to RMB in our part of the world, I turned to Abram Bicksler. With a freshly minted PhD. in Sustainable Agriculture from the University of Illinois, Abram currently serves as an instructor with the International Sustainable Development Studies Institute in Chiang Mai; a key ECHO Asia partner. Abram (shown here) is helping to design a trial by which various RMB approaches can be tested to see if any might actually boost the production of banana propagation material in a way that can be readily adopted by farmers.

Having recently run a "trial" RMB at the Upland Holistic Development Project Center, Abram is encouraged by initial results. He is now planning to implement a comprehensive field trial to evaluate promising methodologies which have emerged during the preliminary trial. Hopefully, this collaboration between ECHO, Abram (ISDSI) and UHDP will yield some very useful RMB techniques for regional pig farmers to employ.

Garden in the Sky

Rooftop gardening creates a good bit of buzz. But real working examples are somewhat difficult to find. The March 14 (2010) edition of the Bangkok Post carried a very informative article about successful rooftop gardening efforts at the eight-story Lak Si District office in Bangkok. The article, with photos, details how the garden has reached productivity following years of trial and error. District office personnel are reportedly using 400 square meters to produce about 70 different crops in rotation over the course of a year. Check out the article via the following link http://www.bangkokpost.com/life/family/34431/garden-in-the-sky (or click on the title above).

Biogas-powered electrical generator in Myanmar

Check out this link (click on the title above for link) for a brief video shot at the Myanmar Baptist Convention agricultural training center near Yangon in early March. Biogas brewed from wastes produced by a few hogs located just above this location is piped to an electric generator. Each day, there's enough biogas produced to power the 3 kw generator for 45 minutes in the morning and another 45 minutes in the evening. The generator, in turn, powers lights as well as an electric pump that extracts water from the center's well for storage in an elevated tank. The stored water flows by gravity to spigots throughout the farm.

Saw Hei Moo, who directs the project, estimates that the biogas system costs about $350 with the generator running around $300. Toss in perhaps another $100 for pipe, cylinders and other types of essential apparatus. For those living and working off the grid, Hei Moo affirms that this sustainable source of power is "worth the investment."

Also, we heard reports of much larger biogas-powered electrical systems powering rural communities in central Myanmar.

A Farm for Children

On the outskirts of Yangon, Myanmar, I recently had opportunity to visit a children’s home operated by Samuel Thang. Impressively, Samuel and team are using 20 acres of adjoining land to produce enough rice to feed 47 children five months out of the year. Leftover rice straw provides enough fodder to fuel the home’s four cows, which in turn produce a year round supply of milk.

One other thing that the cows and 15 resident goats produce (with the help of a few pigs) is manure. This by-product fertilizes the home’s three-acre garden, making the operation almost completely self-sufficient in vegetables. Additionally, various types of fruit trees, including guava, banana, and papaya as well as pineapple, are scattered throughout the garden.

Samuel stresses that while the supplemental production of milk, rice, fruit, vegetables and a little meat lowers overall expenses by at least ¼, such an effort requires adequate land, water, labor and management.

The kids chip into the overall effort during daily chore times as well as Saturdays and holidays. Samuel reckons that exposure to appropriate farm activities is good for the children, offering them important life skills. Still, he reminds us that their involvement in such work is auxiliary since the main focus of the ministry is to provide the young people with a good education and a safe place to reside.

Friends Like Nam Saeng

I’ve known Nam Saeng for well over a decade. Farming several acres of hilly land in the Chiang Dao district of northern Thailand, he’s an agricultural jack-of-all-trades and a master of many including agroforestry, green manure cover cropping and backyard farming.

Nam Saeng isn’t one to keep trade secrets. He cheerfully accepts visits from farmers and development workers. And it’s obvious that he believes in the power of exchange. By sharing his practical farming knowledge with others, Nam Saeng ultimately gains more useful information; plus friends.

ECHO Asia is one of Nam Saeng’s friends. Many of our regional partners have made the trip to his mountain farm to learn from his work.

I’m encouraged by the fact that he isn’t one of a kind. All across Asia, whether in the uplands, the river deltas, along the coasts or even in the cities, there are others like him. In each place there are farmers who are overcoming various challenges to produce food and improve incomes, and also enthusiastically share what they know.

Nam Saeng may not be fully aware of the extent his helpfulness. But with over 1 billion chronically hungry people in the world (most of whom live in Asia), I believe that it is imperative for ECHO Asia, and our regional agricultural development partners, to nurture working relationships with such innovative small farmers who possess the zeal to share.

A all expense paid trip to Huai Hee

As an occasional instructor for hire, this past week I had the opportunity to accompany students from ISDSI's (http://www.isdsi.org/) Political Forest Ecology course for a portion of their two-week long field visit to Karen forest communities in the remote mountains of Mae Hong Son in extreme northwest Thailand. Specifically, my visit was limited to the village of Huai Hee, a small settlement of a few dozen households at the base of Doi Pui, Mae Hong Son's highest mountain.

If I were to drive one of three road options to Huai Hee from Chiang Mai (none of which are fully paved) the trip would require 1-2 days. However, a Thai airlines flight over the rugged and still largely jungled mountains from CNX to Mae Hong Son required only 40 minutes with a 1.5 hour journey back to Huai Hee by four wheel drive. So having left my modern Chiang Mai home a little before 10:00 a.m., I suddenly found myself in remote, Huai Hee by 1:30 p.m. The ISDSI group arrived by foot from the closest community of Nam Hoo (a satellite village of Huai Hee) an hour later.

The next three days were full of activities that focused on the local forest environment as well as traditional rotational farming and other forms of livelihood such as Karen cuisine and the use of natural dyes to produce beautiful homemade textiles. In addition, I had to grade 17 essays and journal entries.

Sunday's activity was a hike to the summit of 5,160 ft. Doi Pui. Sounds impressive (and it was a steep trail), however, Hui Hee rests at an elevation of roughly 3,000 ft. So there wasn't an excessive amount of up and down that day.

Except for the bald summit, Doi Pui is covered with impressive forest. The higher the elevation the more evidence of cloud forest with an abundance of moss and orchids covering the evergreen trees. In fact, the people of Huai Hee, fighting the illegal harvest and trade of rare native orchids, have established an orchid conservation area that covers hundreds of acres of local forest.

Almost to the top of mountain, our local guides pointed out the wreckage of an airplane. By no means an aviation expert, all that was obvious to me were ancient leftovers of a propeller and pistons (with an I.D. plate without a serial number) as well as some scorched fragments of what appeared to be aluminum aircraft skin. I would have like to poked about a bit more but the wreckage was guarded by some very zealous leaches.

I've heard two stories related to the wreckage. One is that the plane was a WWII American warplane that bought the farm on this remote peak over 60 years ago. Another more intriguing tale is that the craft was a "bank plane" full of gold that crashed many decades ago. The locals, finding no survivors and gold bricks scattered about....(you can guess the rest of the story). Anyhow, given that the Second World War didn't spare this region and that there's reportedly no one left in the community that remembers the crash, I personally subscribe to the WWII air crash theory.

Only a few hundred yards past the air crash site the forest suddenly transforms into an alpine meadow. As the elevation is still too low to be a real tree line, my guess is that the combination of thin soil, dry season fires and free-range cattle is what keeps the mountain top in a bald state (similar to the high elevation balds of my native southern Appalachians which become "unbald" in the 20th century following the advent of effective fire control and the ban on free-range cattle).
The 360 degree view of Mae Hong Son was indescribable. The view contained rugged mountains, remote valleys, a single thread of road and a distant, tiny community. Scattered within the vast forest were some swidden fields where Karen rice is grown. Each patch is surrounded by woodland in various stages of succession. These diverse stages of regrowth reflect the forest fallow that follows a single year of traditional Karen crop production for each swidden field.

Following lunch, a brief group activity and a photo taking spree, threatening clouds forced our retreat back to Huai Hee.

Over the next two days we accompanied the people of Huai Hee to witness the annual planting of upland rice (yes, the rainy season has begun) and to participate in other aspects of their livelihoods.

During the last evening in Huai Hee, the ISDSI students entertained the local residents with their silly camp songs. The Karen retaliated with renditions of their own. At one point, one of our female hosts jumped up to lead an rowdy tune. But within a measure or two, the American and Canadian students began to recognize the performance. Suddenly, the entire bamboo gazebo was rocking with a vigorous bilingual session of Father Abraham.

On the last day I watched the ISDSI students, laden with heavy backpacks and other gear (and a few Karen guides with only a shoulder bag each) trudge up the mountain in the direction of Huai Tong Kaw, their final destination. I stayed behind to await my 4WD ride back to Mae Hong Son town. 1.5 hours later, still waiting on my ride, I decided to hire a motorcycle to drive me and my two bags back to the city. However, given the steep terrain and rough stretches of road, I was greatly relieved to meet the truck only a few miles outside of Huai Hee.

The flight back to Chiang Mai on a tiny 12 seat plane was the perfect ending to my five-day visit to Mae Hong Son. Flying slow and low over the mountains, I enjoyed an eagle's view of the rugged terrain that sustains the people of Huai Hee and dozens of other communities between Mae Hong Son and Chiang Mai.

I'm already scheming up another visit.