Alternative Agriculture for Self-Sufficient Appropriate Technology

AICAF, ICA Japan, ICA Nepal, INSAN

3. INSAN organised a 5 day Permaculture Design Course for the Vietnamese and Nepalese participants. They visited the INSAN office. INSAN is a the network style NGO, concerned with sustainable agriculture and permaculture.

4. Main activities of INSAN are construction a natural resouces center, marketing of organic products, research and documenting on present agriculture approaches, training on sustainable agriculture and environment education, and publishing books and posters.

5.They paticipated in a 5 day Permaculture Design Course in AAA farm in ancient Bhakdapur district. The field of wheat and oil mustard extends over 1300m of hilly area.

6.AAA farm was established in 1988.

Farm manager Ramesh (orange jacket) is explaining about AAA farm history and the outline.They delivery organic vegetables to hotels and restaurants in Kathmandu valley, cooprating with womens groups in the suburbs. (From left) Gita, Goma, Maya, Shurendra and Durga (Nepalie paticipants)

7. In the farm, there is a small green house, a irrigation pond, liquid manure, compost and cow shed, mixed garden of herb vegetables extending in the farm.

Permaculture Design Course

8. Vietnamese and Nepalie paticipants are introducing themselves and sharing their expectation for Permaculture Design Course. They were interested in appropriate technology in Nepal, facilitation method, processing of organic farming from modan agriculture, how to get cost reduction and so on.

9.Vietnamese and Nepalies agricultural conditions.

The paticipants made a topographic map and the map of main agricultural products. Vietnam is the 3rd rice exporting country in the world, and its goverment is promoting monoculture. Nepal was exporting food 10 years ago, but they have to import 10% of total food now. You can see(Right) Nepal map, and (Left) Vietnamese map.

10.The paticipants wear their national costumes. (From left) Vietnamese Aozai, Nepalies Sari, Aosai, Sari and Nepali kuruta Surubal. Women in most of the tropical countries where they do not have many chance to go out are preserving traditional clothes. It is rare chance to find Nepali traditional mens clothes even in the towns of Nepal.

One square meter of soil need of 1000kg organic compost at average. It will have bubbles after adding chemical Hydorogen Perxide if the soil has organic matter. From left, they are field soil, compost by cow dung and sand.

We can use other methods like soil colour and PH. These methods are used for soil management.

12. Introduction of Nepalie projects

Nepalie paticipants are explaining their activities. He is presenting Sustainable Agriculture in Parabat District. They have started home garden for nutrition improvement and self-reliance and micro credit since 1986. Sustainable Agriculture is spreading throughout the villages now.

A ethnic group in Northen Vietnam had to migrate to hilly area from low land because of the huge dam construction. 5 years sustainable agricultural project has started since 1994 for their lack of hill farming skills. It includes planting multi-purpose and fruit trees, beekeeping, and micro credit group for self-reliance.

Phatarekett Model Farm

They visited a model farm. (This side) Basket compost: put kitchen garbage and fresh grass in every side frame of 1m. They can plant vegetables around it. A green house for spring vegetable with simple materials can be see at the backside.

Mixing 20g bacteria with 2 square meter soil, and cover with rice straw for 3 months. Then mix reproducing micro-organism soil before cultivate field.

Covering cauliflower with net to avoid crossing with other vegetables and collect its original seeds. There are soil harvesting ponds, earthworm composts, tank for collecting cow urine, comparing plot for weeds, Light for collecting harmful insects in the farm. (Left) Bishunu:ICA Nepal Translater

Vietnamese paticipants made some posters of their culture and photos and post cards of projects, and with Neplies paticipants and at visiting places. Villagers around Phataleket model farm are watching them.

Nepalies staple food is Dal bhat. It is Rice(Bat) and Vegetable curry (Tarukari), Bean soup(Dal), Spicy pickles(Achal) and salad. Nepali are eating them everyday. Plus they take milk tea just after they get up and afternoon snack.

19.There is a plenty of festivals in Nepal since Hindu religion is polytheism. Wedding season is in January and February which is after harvesting and the end of the rainy season. This is festival of Sosutani goddess for happy marrige life and wishing marriage.

Sulochana, another facilitator from INSAN, shows them history of agricultural chemical, food chain, and the relation of harmful and beneficial insects. This photo shows an Indian girl with malformed hands which is due to her mother's use of toxic agricultural chemical. Her mother was passed away from blood cancer.

Mix the same amount of cow urine and crush herbs which have bitter and spicy taste like Neem, Mugwort and Asuro. Cover and mix them everyday, and then it will become natural pesticides and liquid manure. Dilute it with the water of 20 times more water for nursery.

PRA was created for minority or socially oppressed people. Phanindora, INSAN staff (Middle) is introducing PRA about history and process of research methods. Methods includes social and resouces map, time line, seasonal calendar and organizational diagram.

All paticipants are walking in a farm to collect imformation about vegetation, cultivated plants, topography and border in order to know how they can change this farm to gain more sustainability.

24. First they were divided into Vietnamese and Nepali teams and drawing two pictures and then presenting the future planing. Vietnamese team is designing map with various ideas till late at night.

25. He points which should be improvement points such as planting more variety of vegetables and fruit trees, constructing several small compost sheds, planting wind break, making irrigation system and so on.Then Ram who is the former president of Nepal Permaculture Group(NPG), had comments that they always have to consider about the effect of our design on society,economy and ecology.

(Right map) Vietnamese futrure plan (Left map) Nepalies future plan.

Sun Rise Farm

26.The second half of our exchange programme was the observation trip. Sun Rise Farm, located in a suburb of Kathmandu, is one of 31 Sustainable Agricultural Farms in the Midlle and Western Nepal. The main purposes of this farm are model farm, sustainable agricultural trainig and resource center for information and traditional seeds.

27. The farm has several plots, which are for natural farming, mixed garden of herbs and vegetable and agroforestry. (2nd form left) A farm owner, Shuresta is trying not to bring anything which include seeds and compost materials from outside of the farm. He likes to make eco system in the farm.

They packed vegetable seed sets to give paticipants to visiting places. One set with 9 packages, which contains red and black beans, radish, okura, tomato, pumpkin, mustard, spinach and green vegetable.

29. They moved to Chitwan District in Terai plain near Indian border. It took us 7 hours to go 200 km along the sharp valley and river.Chandra (4th from Right) found Permaculture after his crops had lots of diseases in 1988. Then he organized the local farmer groups and sustainalbe agricultural training. We discussed with the neighborhood farmers about the problems of changing process to organic farming.

30. This field is for the intercrop of sunflower for oil and soybeans. He has been collecting sunflower seeds by himself for 4 years. And there are agroforestry, biogas from cow dung, mix vegetable garden and beekeeping. His dream is to make a permaculture village here.

Organic Shop

31.Nepali first organic shop for health and environment was opened by Ecolodical Services center in Narayanghat, Chitwan District. They have organic agricultural calenders and books, herbal products, essential oils, beans and honey.

Rampur Agriculture Campus

32. This agriculture campus is the only one in Nepal. One of the students shows us their organic expriment plots. This plots is for technology of soil management and nutrition for carrot cultivation. He made several plots to research the correlation between soil improvement and nutrition.

33. This plot is for Sustainable yield of Rice-Wheat double cropping. He made small plots to research the difference of yields caused by the amount of chemical fertilizer and organic compost, mulching. Both students are planing to work in their home town after they graduate.

Ecological Services Center

34. It was raining so heavily out of season, that we could not go to the center. But we could talk with Basanta, the director of the center (2nd from Left) near there. The purpose of this center is narrowing the distance between economy and ecology through sustainable development. Main activities are researching water resouce and health care, encouraging community forest and nursery and making model farms.(4th from Left) Hemanta:ICA Nepal Coodinater.

Dev Daha Small Farmers Organic Groups

35. They were in Dev Daha village in Chitwan District. They have started 5 small farmers organic groups with 94 farmers. Half of the members are organic farmers, and are selling organic vegetables whose prices are 20% higher than the those of the regular vegetables at local market. They started to from a microcredit group too. We visited a few organic gerdens.

36.We arrived village before sunset because of the overrun schedule. Many farmers were still waiting for us.

37. All paticipants got Tika which is Red powder meaning for happiness on their forehead and the flower necklaces made of marrygold. Vietnamese paticipants look happy. They hoped everybody could share these experiences and practices with other farmers back in their own communities and it could help implement Sustainable Agriculture.