Role model farmer

Friday, January 27, 2012

It is possible for smallholder households to increase their incomes substantially with improved vegetables production and marketing. Mr Tes Sarorn is one of the many farmers in Cambodia to whom this applies. He participated in trainings in marketing, business planning and growing and harvesting techniques. In farm field schools he studied on gourd growing techniques and he did eggplant trials. Based on the trial results and with his new knowledge and experience he decided to expand his vegetable growing area fully convinced that this will generate more income.

Mr Tes Sarorn lives in Knol Kangthbong village, Svay Ang commune, Svay Chrum district, Svay Rieng province in Cambodia. He has seven sons and daughters including his son in law. Five of them are garment workers in Phnom Penh and the other two are staying at home to help him run business. Mr Sarorn used to work partly as farmer and partly as business man in the village. Here he worked as machine repairer and he has a paddy thresh rental. He has 40,000 square meters land for rice field.

He used to grow rice only in the rainy season and was not used to grow vegetables or other crops in the dry season even if there was enough water and land for vegetable growing. Previously, he grew only a few types of vegetable such as kang kongs, and ridge gourds by using traditional techniques because he did not have the knowledge and skills. The vegetables were often destroyed by insects. He spent a lot of money buying vegetables for family consumption.

As there is now an increasing number of machine repairers and paddy thresher renters in the village his income decreased from day to day. In order to increase his income, he considered growing vegetable as an option to get more money. Being a member of the Cambodian Farmers Association Federation of Agricultural Producers (CFAP) he was one of the selected farmers to join CFAP-trainings for small farmers groups aimed at improving their market access through rural economic activities in vegetable and rice production and marketing. Mr Tes Sarorn was very excited and he hoped that he would get more knowledge and skills to grow vegetables.

In the training he studied on bitter gourd growing techniques and at his house he did eggplant trials by using mulching film techniques on a 150 square meters trial plot compared with a 50 square meters normal plot. From the trial results, he learnt that the eggplant with the mulching film produced a lot more than the normal plot. The normal plot did not grow very well and faced insects.

Based on the trial results, he has decided to expand his vegetable growing area in the dry season by changing his rice field to a vegetable field. He plans to grow many types of vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers, wax gourds, bitter gourds, pumpkins and long beans on 2,600 square meters of land. Until now, at least 8 villagers around his house are trying to copy the techniques from him. They also asked the knowledge support from him.

Mr Tes Sarorn is a model farmer, showing that the CFAP trainings sort effect and that it is possible for smallholder households to increase their incomes substantially from improved vegetables production and marketing. However, the true success lies not in the model farmers, but in other villagers seeing this and starting to learn and applying these new techniques. Early signs are that this is starting to happen and the coming growing seasons will tell whether this will truly happen.
 
The first farmer field school has trained 31 farmers in 8 communes. As a result, the large majority was very interested and expanded their growing area. A lot of people in the village approached and visited the trial plots of model farmers in order to check to see the facts and learn.    

During the farmer field day in the village with around 50 participants, all the participants were very interested in the new techniques and had a lot of inquiries related the growing techniques and market. Most of them were willing to follow and join the training.

Moreover, with the whole value chain system, the expectation is that there will be an increase in number of vegetable producers and a gradual build-up of contacts with middlemen and traders to meet the demand in the market.

The model farmers like Mr Tes Sarorn are the key person to disseminate the new knowledge and experiences to other farmers for the group members and non-group members in the village. So it is very important to select the right farmer to do the experiment. It is easy to convince other farmers to follow if they see the result because most of them do not dare to do first and very often wait to see result.
 
Hard skills are more popular than soft skills. Farmers want to see quick result. Long term investment is hardly convincing to farmers who need quick income for their urgent household needs.