August 17, 2018. It was a rainy day in Yangon. Winrock’s F2F staff, from the head office and Asia region, and volunteers hugged each other and said ‘bye’ from their hearts in the Yangon airport lobby. I remembered the day I finished my final examination in University; all the friends were happy as we had faced the biggest challenge of our life, however, we were so sad from deep within our hearts as we had to be apart after 5 years of friendship under the same roof.

After just as many years implementing USAID-funded Farmer-to-Farmer Program in Asia region, mainly in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Nepal, Winrock is going to hand over the program to another implementer at the end of September. We are hugging with great happiness and pride for accomplishing the 5-year program successfully, wishing each other to have bright futures after. However, I felt everyone’s sadness from their eyes for the separation and being away from Winrock’s roof where we had lived for 5 years together. Yes, it was  similar to my last day of university life. It was  bite-the-bullet time. We have to accept the things we cannot change, haven’t we?

Each and every host country in the Asia F2F program conducted a learning event to review the program’s activities we worked hard on, successes we accomplished, impacts we made, challenges we faced and opportunities we have to improve. We discussed those things in the regional workshop conducted from August 15 to 17, 2018 in Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State. Within 5 years, we, Asia F2F program assisted 19,184 people in 3 host countries through 330F2F volunteer assignments in the areas of rural development, agricultural education and training and youth entrepreneurship. We have done a good job for the people and for the host countries, of course including my motherland. We were not just focusing on productivity, but we also considered food safety. We were not just improving the quality of agriculture products, but we also alert on resilience and constantly thought about sustainability. Our focus was not only on agriculture but also on people; how they live their lives, how they work together to improve their livelihood and business.

I tried to shift my emotional thoughts to technical analysis. F2F has reviewed itself, how about me? What did the past 5 years of my life as a Winrocker mean? How much did I improve? Who was I, and who am I right now? I analyzed the baseline and impact of my bio-data.

OMG! I found that Winrock and F2F changed my life a lot. I changed from a vet who only thought about Foot and Mouth Disease all the time to someone who is advocating integration of livestock and crop productions. F2F changed me from a lab technician who was worrying about the bacterial contamination of baby hamster kidney cells in which virus replicated to produce FMD vaccine, into a man who is worrying about the safety of the food for the people of the whole world. I should not show-off that I changed from a specialist to a generalist. However, I have the confidence to say that the F2F program and its volunteers helped broaden my view from the microscope to the globe.

As a Winrocker, F2F impacted not only my vision but also my career life. The knowledge gained from F2F volunteers, field trips, and management work, helped a lot in my other life as a freelance writer.

Working in the field translating from volunteers’ scientific information into farmer’s language was the most pride filled l part of my job in the F2F program. If the technology and science were the gods, F2F and I as an F2F technical officer will be the messengers. Without farmers, there is no world. Without scientific and technical knowledge, the farmers cannot grow. Without the messengers like F2F, the farmers lack  that knowledge.

As a Winrocker, I am very proud to be the one who understands farmers lives, the one who serves  the farmers , the one who has the vision to feed the world, the one who fights for resilience and sustainability of agriculture, and the one who is working hard.

Mr Kofi Annan, who is former secretary general of United Nations and passed away recently, once said, “To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there”.

I was a Winrocker and F2F technical staff. Yeah, I am sure I chose it very very well, five years ago. And it was right. It will be one of the best choices ever in my life.

My last visit to Mali was in 2013, and there has been significant change since then. In Bamako, construction has progressed rapidly, and outside Bamako, roads are now in good shape and services, along those roads, are much more available.  Use of cell phones is ubiquitous and is one of the most important factors responsible for advancing social welfare.  Medical care is much more available with clinics and hospitals in all the towns.  In the south, trypanosomiasis [disease caused by the Tsetse Fly] is no longer the primary factor restricting livestock production, and has been replaced by nutrition and internal parasites as the primary constraints.

One purpose of this project is to lay the foundations for a future value chain analysis of the marketing of small ruminants, primarily sheep.  The goal of the analysis is to augment sale of small ruminants so poor farmers’ standard of living is raised.  By determining who the various actors affecting the production and marketing of small ruminants are and what they are doing, changes can be implemented to improve efficiency.

We visited villages around Bamako and Bougouni which are in the semi humid zone.  Briefly what we found is that a major problem is mortality of animals before they reach market age.  This is a problem in all the villages we visited, but different villages with slightly different management styles appeared to be losing animals for different reasons.  In one village their lambs and kids were dying young, probably because they were actively preventing them from nursing colostrum right after birth.  In other villages death loss occurred later soon after weaning and appeared to have been due to internal parasites, primarily Haemonchus and Fasciola, although Eimeria (coccidiosis) may also be involved.

In addition to disease, nutrition is also a constraint although not as much.  Suboptimal nutrition increases the time until they reach market weight.  Small ruminants during the dry season are allowed to wander free in the bush where there is still plenty of browse [woody plants, vines, brush] although little grass.  Since the digestive physiology of goats and to a lesser extent sheep is adapted to use browse rather than grass, this is not as problematic as for cattle.

Livestock owners in the villages also cut browse for their animals on a daily basis and there is a small economic component of villagers cutting browse, transporting it on motorcycles and selling it to livestock owners in towns.  They also feed kitchen waste – millet and rice – but this is more important for poultry than small ruminants.  Some places have rock salt for their livestock, but this practice plus the use of homemade salt/mineral blocks could be expanded.  There are several women’s cooperatives in the country making and selling these blocks.

During the growing season the flocks of small ruminants go into the bush to forage, but they are controlled by herders to keep them out of the crops.  This has implications for another program, planting improved forage trees, that has a lot of interest.  There are a number of species of legume trees that are being introduced worldwide as high protein fodder.  Two being used in Mali are Leucaena and Gliciridia.  In addition Moringa, a native of India that is claimed to have excellent nutritive properties, is being introduced.  The main problem is that they are very palatable, especially Leucaena, so during the dry season when sheep and goats wander unrestricted, they eat the saplings that are planted before they grow out of reach.  The villagers commonly ask for advice on how to protect the plants.  Leucaena has been used in Mali for decades.

Something that concerns me is that the training that the villagers received in the past was not as comprehensive as it should have been.  For example, the use of colostrum is the first principle of neonatal management for transfer of maternal antibodies, but none of the villagers we visited were aware of its importance.  They were aware that urea is part of nutritional supplementation, but they did not know why nor were they knowledgeable about its toxicity.  It seems that often they were given steps to follow, but without explanation of the reasons for the steps.

The other part of the assignment, study the functioning of the marketplace, raised some contradictions.  Before going into the field, we asked about how a farmer sells his animals.  We were told that usually the farmer sells them himself at the marketplace, but there are middlemen who will buy the animal for resale and if there are problems, the middleman assumes the risk.  In the field at the cattle market in Bougouni we were told that if there is a middleman, he contracts with the farmer as to a price and then sells the animal and gives the farmer the money.  The farmer pays a percentage of the price to the middleman.  If the middleman gets more for the cow, he keeps the difference plus his percentage.  If he cannot get the price, he returns the animal to the farmer.  Usually, however, the farmer sells directly to the trucker who takes the bull to Bamako to be butchered.

In a few cases if the bulls are not sold because they are too thin, the owners will trek them to Bamako, grazing along the way and hopefully putting on weight.  We did not determine how frequent that is, but it did not seem to be an option for small ruminants.

In Bamako we were told for that for international trade the farmer sells the animal on credit and is paid when the animal is sold to the end buyer.  In Bougouni we were told that the farmer is paid on the spot.

The small ruminant market in Bougouni is strictly local with farmers trying to sell only a few animals, fewer than a dozen apiece.  With small ruminants there is a marked difference between the local animals and the improved breeds from the north – Chad, Balibalia, Sahel, Sudan.  Improved breeds are often sold for breeding rather than slaughter.  The buyer pays on the spot or if known to the seller, may offer something as collateral with an agreement to pay the rest later.

Other actors are suppliers of veterinary drugs and nutritional supplements, often the same person.  Their use does not appear to be widespread in the villages, but people in towns do purchase them.  Vaccines are available for most of the major diseases except fiebre afteuse (FMD, foot and mouth disease).  These vaccines are produced at the Central Veterinary Laboratory (LCV) and include blackleg, anthrax, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, peste de petites ruminants, and pasteurellosis.  Programs to encourage farmers to vaccinate regularly have been implemented by various agencies, but have not been notably successful.  ILRI has a program that resulted in almost doubling the vaccination rate, but it was still less than half the animals.

As for FMD, at least one village reported that it is a frequent occurrence during the rainy season.  It does not occur every year, but often enough to be a major problem.  The vaccines come from Botswana where the FMD serotypes (SAT -1, 2, 3, O, A) are different from West Africa serotypes (SAT 2, O, A) and thus are almost useless in preventing Malian FMD.  The problems of vaccinating are analogous to influenza in humans in that the vaccine has to be matched to the viral strain causing the outbreak.  For future projects the suggestion is to reduce mortality through better education and implement additional channels of sale that would result in a stable marketplace.  There are two major markets for sheep and to a much lesser extent goats, Tabaski and daily.  Tabaski comes once a year and has important requirements as to ram color and conformation with some importance placed on weight.   The rest of the year is either for butchers who are concerned primarily with dressing percentage or baptisms, birthdays, weddings or other celebrations that may have a minor interest in the color, sex and appearance of the animal.  Informing the various requirements to the producers with rewards for meeting them would help.  While Tabaski requirements are well-known, the quotidian requirements are not regarded as equally important.

Fattening animals is becoming more frequent, especially for women.  We did not encounter it much, but the few people who were fattening animals did not seem to be aware of nutritional requirements, especially for protein, minerals and roughage.

The source of animals to fatten are either the market or the producer’s own herd.  Buying on the market is riskier because the fattener is unaware of any health problems that may reoccur and a producer is not normal going to sell his best animals for fattening.  To be financially successful, the fattener should also have their own source of feed.  Buying all inputs cuts margins too thin.  Supplements such as oil seed cake or bran, mineral salt, molasses/urea can be purchased, but the main dietary components for energy and protein are better produced by the fatteners themselves.

Suggestions to be studied for their feasibility are planted pastures with inter-seeded legumes (lablab and others) and forage trees such as Leucaena, Gliciridia.  and others adapted to Malian conditions.  Small ruminant fattening as a sideline to other agricultural processing enterprises producing by-products to be used as feed has been successful in other countries and can be successful here.

Mali is a contrast of tradition and modernism.  The farmers do things very traditionally, but when there is some new appropriate technology or procedure that is within their means, they jump on it with both feet.  They don’t hold onto the notion “this is the way we’ve always done it.”  It makes my work a lot easier.

This week’s blog comes from Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) volunteer, Rachel Schattman, a Produce Safety Specialist with the University of Vermont and a post-doctoral fellow with the USDA Northeast Climate Hub. She has worked in agriculture for 19 years, either as a farm worker, farm owner or extension specialist.

I have been working in agriculture, either as a farm worker, farm owner, or Extension specialist for 19 years. Recently, I volunteered with Winrock International in Senegal. I accepted the assignment because I was eager to see how farmers in other parts of the world ran their businesses. I was especially excited to see how people grow crops similar to those I am familiar with in a very different climate and soil type.

I volunteered in the Theis region of Senegal, which spans the coastal area between the national capital of Dakar and the colonial city of Saint Louis. In this region, several thousand vegetable farmers grow a diverse range of crops including peanuts, cabbage, eggplant, tomatoes, cassava, and many more. Many farms belong to cooperatives, and these cooperatives are often federated under a single entity.

One such federated co-op, the Coastline Vegetable Producers Union (UML), has a leadership that works diligently to promote the interests of its members. For example, in recent years, they have attracted international funding for an onion drying facility which allows for some members to export onions for the first time. Since 2015, they have partnered with Winrock International to bring agricultural experts to Mboro to train co-op members on agro-ecological practices. I was fortunate to be the third volunteer brought in by Winrock to work with UML. As part of my assignment, I was asked to develop and give a 5-day workshop, to share what I know with the remarkable farmers of UML and I took the opportunity to learn from them in turn.

Volunteer inspecting compost made by UML farmers

I began my volunteer period in mid-September, 2017 with two-days of field visits. On the first day, Winrock field staff Saliou Ndiaye, Ndiame Sene and I met with the President of UML, Soyibou Diaw, at UML headquarters in Mboro. The secretary of UML, Abdoul Aziz Sow, as well as several other members were also present for our discussion on the assignment and some common practices that I would likely see on our field visits. We then visited the farms of two members of UML located near Mboro (Soyibou Diaw, the President of UML, and Galaye Samb, another UML member) Both farmers showed our team the compost they had made following a previous Winrock training, and were eager to discuss how they were applying compost to their fields as well as the challenges they faced.

On the second day, we visited three farms in Joro, north of Mboro by 30km. Our hosts were kind enough to let me try my hand at tilling with a donkey, which was a first for me. Several plots that we observed were on significant slopes and we observed soil erosion related to rainfall and irrigation. Efforts to mitigate the erosion included redirecting water flow through hand-dug trenches. It was clear from these two sets of visits that the farmers of UML are driven by a desire to improve their production practices, and eager to experiment with new growing techniques.

Volunteer getting a chance to try tilling with a donkey.

After the visits, Saliou and I worked together to develop and translate a 5-day training course on soil health and nutrient management based on my observations from the fields and UML’s training requests. Approximately 30 UML members attended the course, which was held in the Mboro town hall. We started the week by covering 5-principles of ecological agriculture: (1) recycling biomass, (2) managing organic matter, (3) keeping nutrients in place, (4) diversification, and (5) synergy. Each principle was accompanied by examples of on-farm management approaches. In response to questions posed by UML participants, we also discussed the specific nutrient needs of crops grown on their farms, how to calculate the nutrient amounts in purchased fertilizer, and a comparison of nutrient amounts contained in a variety of fertilizers (including compost).

Participants practiced calculating nitrogen (N), potassium (P), and phosphorus (K) concentrations in fertilizer mixes based on the weight of the bag and percentage content in the fertilizer mix. I brought with me a home soil test kit and refill pack to use as a demonstration and to leave with UML.  In the last lecture of the workshop series, I showed how the coast of Senegal around Theis is already impaired by nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, and we discussed the importance of not over fertilizing for the protection of coastal areas.

I hope that the workshop provided useful and usable information to the UML farmers. As a volunteer, the experience of working with UML and Winrock was extremely valuable to me. Having only conducted extension and education in the USA, this assignment allowed me to work with growers in a completely different economic, ecological, and social context. It was a challenging and exciting exercise that forced me to return to the basic principles of agro-ecological agriculture, and apply it to an area that is almost the opposite of where I am from, in terms of soil characteristics and climate.  I was impressed and humbled by the UML farmers; there were several farmers, with whom I spoke at length, willing to try new practices, even in the face of a prevailing social pressure to maintain the status quo. The excitement and enthusiasm of the UML farmers is very contagious.

Farmer explaining to the volunteer how he makes his compost

I was very fortunate to work with a skilled professional, Saliou Ndiaye, who not only provided language translation, but also helped me to understand the social norms and expectations of the farmers and their communities. An agricultural professional himself, Saliou was able to help me distill key topics (such as soil pH, and cation exchange capacity) into terms farmers understood easily. Beyond the trainings, my time with Saliou and other members of the Winrock team in Senegal helped me to develop a deep appreciation of Senegalese culture, embodied in their teranga (hospitality) and generosity. I have a deep appreciation for the Dakar-based Winrock team, and I thank them for making this assignment a truly excellent experience.

The Senegalese textile company SODEFITEX plays an important role in rural development. Founded in 1974, the company sources cotton from smallholder farmers in Senegal to produce textiles. SODEFITEX collaborates with a Senegalese financial institution to offer farmers inputs (cotton seeds and fertilizer) on credit and provides advice to farmers on how to improve cotton yield. After the harvest, SODEFITEX purchases the cotton at the farm level at a market price agreed upon before the planting season. After deducting a portion of the value of the harvested cotton to reimburse the input credit, SODEFITEX pays the remainder to the farmer.

These cotton farmers belong to the National Federation of Cotton Producers (FNPC) and are organized in village-level cooperatives to interact with SODEFITEX. Approximately 24,000 farmers in different regions of Senegal currently supply cotton to SODEFITEX. By facilitating input credit, offering farming advice, and purchasing the farmers’ cotton at a price set in advance, SODEFITEX offers valuable services that are often lacking in Senegal.

Unfortunately, cotton yields and production in Senegal have fallen in recent years. Adverse weather has contributed to the decline, but another factor has been lack of management and leadership at the farmer cooperative level. Production declines negatively impact both the farmers and SODEFITEX. Since farmers have not produced enough cotton to meet demand, SODEFITEX has had to turn away customers.

In September, Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer Andy Lohof spent two weeks in Senegal working with SODEFITEX and FNPC officials on training in management and leadership of farmer cooperatives. The training was held in Tambacounda, site of the main SODEFITEX production facility and the largest city in eastern Senegal, located approximately 400km from the capital city of Dakar.

In interactive training sessions with numerous group exercises, Mr. Lohof addressed questions such as how to convince farmers to participate actively in their cooperatives, how to set cooperative priorities, how to define and delegate cooperative responsibilities, and how to estimate the profitability of different crops to make informed planting decisions. At the end of the workshop, Mr. Lohof discussed how to replicate the training topics to the cooperatives at the village level.

In Senegal, per capita income is only $1,000 (less than 2% of that of the United States). Better management of the cotton cooperatives can result in more cotton for SODEFITEX and better lives for Senegalese farmers and their families.

This week’s blog comes from Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) volunteer, David Ringuette. Mr. Ringuette owns and manages Serikaku Farm Ltd., a 15-acre family farm located in Hawaii which produces cacao, banana, lychee, breadfruit, and star fruit. Mr. Ringuette is a retired agriculture coordinator and professor who taught IPM, pesticide safety, plant propagation, irrigation, and soil management. Since retiring, Mr. Ringuette has successfully completed 11 F2F volunteer assignments, many of which have focused on IPM and production of tropical fruits. He has provided volunteer assistance in East and West Africa, Kyrgyzstan, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and now Myanmar.

In September 2017, I had the opportunity to work on a Farmer to Farmer Assignment in Myanmar. The Farmer to Farmer program is funded by USAID and implemented in Myanmar by Winrock International.

During my 2 weeks in country I worked with citrus growers in southern Shan State on implementing IPM practices. It is a very mountainous area where avocados, tea, and coffee are also commercially grown. These crops were developed as a substitution for poppies. The 77 farmers were eager to learn new pest control strategies. I covered citrus nutrient deficiencies, monitoring techniques, grafting, pruning, physical control, biological control, and use of chemicals.

Like everywhere in the world there were some farmers’ orchards that were in great shape and some needed substantial work, especially pruning. Most farmers did not know the difference between a fungus and bacteria and often applied one chemical for control of everything. One orange grower from Kaungbo village in Yaksauk noted, “We decided to apply a chemical (no matter it is) whenever we saw a problem in our plant. After Winrock F2F’s training on IPM, we understand the need to think and inspect the cause- nutritional deficiency? disease? insect? fungus?”

Teaching farmers how to graft (lining up cambium layers)

Interestingly, farmers told me that there was more money to be made in citrus than any other orchard crop. They wanted to stick with citrus even with some severe disease pressure. Many orchards were intercropped with tea, tomato, garlic, ginger, or mango. I did not understand the mango/citrus system and it seemed to me there was too much resource competition to be successful. The mango usually out competed the citrus. The garlic, ginger, and tomato system lead to deep cultivation and most likely led to root diseases. The system I thought had good potential was tea and citrus. I did discuss with them about chemical application in a 2-crop system.

Discussing pruning in the orchard

The people of Myanmar are very hospitable and accommodating. The lead farmer always had his wife prepare wonderful food for lunch for me and farmers gave me enough tea to start a tea shop. I was also never allowed to carry my bag. I hope, in the future, to return to Myanmar and once again work with these wonderful people.

All of the trainees (I am the one above the Winrock logo). For most of the trainees, I was the first American they have met.

After Mr. Ringuette’s assignment, he expressed, “The growers were very enthusiastic throughout the training. They asked good questions and expressed a sincere willingness to implement the techniques explained. Many farmers inquired about the purchase of pruning tools.”