In the Dry Zone in Myanmar (Pwint Phyu Township, Magway), an impressive number of vegetable farmers and professionals visited the field days last February 6 and 7 2019.
The field days were jointly organized by VegCap, VegImpact, with East West Seeds’ Knowledge Transfer Foundation as the main implementer. The common goal of the projects and the Knowledge Transfer Foundation is to provide practical training and accountable information for vegetable farmers, whose productivity and quality of produce needs to improve to secure income, to lower the cost price and to increase the sustainability of cultivation practices. The field days showed the effects of advanced technologies such as high quality varieties, trellis netting, plastic mulch and seedling trays.
The Field Days in February were organized as part of the ongoing knowledge transfer program. This comprehensive training program is developed under VegCap and implemented with active participation of the Myanmar Ministry of Agriculture, State Agricultural Institutes and NGOs. Wageningen University and Research is leading the knowledge transfer program and is training 25 so-called Super Trainers, who in turn train key farmers and other professionals. The focus of the training is to make available practical knowledge and information for the farmers and to actually demonstrate these practices and skills in the field. The ultimate aim of this project is to reach 65,000 farmers during field demonstrations.
In the farmer event of February 6 and 7, more than a thousand farmers were informed about crop nutrition, crop protection, seedling raising, trellising and the use of mulch in vegetable production. The field days were organized by the group of Super Trainers. During the highly interactive program, farmers attended short presentations in the field at five stations. In addition the farmers received crop guides and technical guides in the Myanmar language and there was an opportunity for creating exchange and discussions. The field day also used live dissemination of the event on Facebook.
To date, more than 35,000 farmers have been reached through the comprehensive training programme and another 30,000 are still expected to be reached until the end of the programme in 2020.
For more information:
Dutch Vegetable Sector Support Myanmar
+95-9-43186450
info@dutchvegsupportmyanmar.com
www.dutchvegsupportmyanmar.com