1,000 metres above sea level, in In Thu Kha Loi Di Village – in Shan State, Myanmar – U Tun Mg lives with his family; four daughters and one son. The 54-year-old farmers primary income comes from agriculture, specifically rice, corn, ginger, turmeric, and groundnut.
“I have been working with agriculture for more than 30 years with traditional agricultural practices. I didn’t have enough knowledge or skills in agricultural production before, which meant that the crop yield wasn’t stable. I couldn’t get a good enough price for my production because of the limited access to the markets. Therefore my income was just enough for my family, and I couldn’t save extra money,” tells U Tun Mg.
U Tun Mg has been participating in the farmer fields school and training provided by MIID’s Agronomists. MIID’s project started in September 2017 in U Tun Mg’s village, with the financial support from UK Aid facilitated via DaNa facility. The project aims to increase economic opportunities for smallholder farmers in the Pa-O Self Administered Zone by enhancing their practical agricultural knowledge, increasing their access to market information, as well as establishing collective selling centres where farmers can join to sell their products.
“I never heard of any agriculture-improving techniques before the project by MIID. I learned Good Agricultural Practices from MIID – such as seed selection methods, seed soaking with Bordeaux mixture, how to make bio-pesticide, bio-fungicides and bio-compost,” says U Tun Mg. Before U Tun Mg learned about the Good Agricultural Practises his plants suffered from an infection of bacterial wilt in their rhizomes every year, and the infected plants wilted and dried very quickly.
But this year will be different: “This year the ginger and turmeric harvest from seeds, chosen by using seed selection and seed soaking methods, were not infected by bacterial wilt,” tell U Tun Mg. U Tun Mg applied other agricultural practices such as making bio-pesticide, bio-fungicides, and bio-compost, which he learned at MIID’s Farmer Field School: “I believe that my income will be higher this year because of the higher yield,” says U Tun Mg.