UPLift Project Journal: September Activities Report--Part 1: KLDF Land & Pig Project

General Update: Team UPLift picked up speed this month with severe weather receding. By mid-September, we completed Round 2 of our Natural Farming Pig Rearing (NFPR) Training with Burmese Teacher Trainers at Teacher Prep College (TPC)—approximately 60 trainees have completed this 10-day training to date. We continue to remedy flood damage on one of our pigpens as we keep the pigs in a conventional aboveground pen in the meantime. School garden project assessments and practice (mock) trainings move along as we continue to learn about area schools in the far reaches of Mae Sot and crevices of migrant villages. The team will make the final decision on choosing 3 schools for the garden project this week. Financial literacy project preparations move along as UPLift Staff wrap up community assessments and continue to research phase 2 income generation while exploring potential income generation partners in Mae Sot and identifying various marketing channels/product demands.

TPC Students taking notes on day 1 of the Natural Farming Pig Rearing (NFPR) Training

Sai Aung Tun explains the dimensions of a bamboo raised bed at a school garden training

Ko Lynn secures 16 bamboo logs atop our modest truck

Heidi leads a yoga ice breaker with TPC NFPR trainees

Project-Specific Updates

1. TPC Land/ KLDF Agriculture Training Center:

Saturated soil from constant downpours in August made it near impossible to begin preparing the soil, let along begin planting on our land plots during this last month. We did, however, make progress in purchasing an automatic grass cutter and cutting the long grass on half the land. Unfortunately, our grass cutter broke down halfway through cutting and is now in the process of getting fixed. The land we originally planned to begin planting Morning Glory is still too wet and overgrown (no chance to cut the grass) to begin planting. In the meantime, we have begun prepping the land for sweet potatoes by tilling the soil, adding rice husk, manure & Indigenous Microorganisms (a popular organic fertilizer). With the soil prepared, the next step is making mounds to plant the sweet potato roots. We anticipate having sweet potatoes in the ground by mid-October. Depending on when the lawn mower is back in commission, we will either be planting corn (for the “Three Sisters” plot—corn, pumpkin & beans) or Morning Glory/ watercress cultivating.

2. TPC Natural Farming Pig Rearing (NFPR) Project:

Pigpen Flooding & Remediation: Last month we reported our plan to speedily remedy flood damages to one of our pigpen so we can move the pigs from their temporary pen ASAP. As of now, we are still a few days away from relocating the pigs back to their original pen. The process of removing the flooded pen filler and re-layering with new soil, sand, and fresh filler has proven timely, labor-intensive, and somewhat costly. For example, before we could refill anything, we needed to remove the old flooded pigpen filler, which was essentially compost soaked in water—heavy and smelly. Luckily, we had over 30 TPC student volunteers join our efforts to remove the old filler (which was very labor intensive) for over 3 hours. Over the course of the next few days, our land manager U Tin Yu removed the remaining old filler on his own time. Subsequently, our team hired 4-day laborers for 2 days to dig filler and start to refill the 90cm deep pen. Waiting for rainless days to complete each step made our timeline even lengthier but eventually we arrived at filling sand and now on to pen filler and finally moving the pigs any day now. Given the difficulties of flood remediation during the wet season, we will wait until the dry season to remedy to 2 remaining pens.

TPC Student Volunteers help our team remove the old pen filler compost from pigpen 1

Ko Lynn and Sai Aung hard at work removing compost/pigpen filler

TPC students transporting compost to their garden

U Tin Yu, our land manager and his son firming down new sand filler in pen 1

Pig Feeding System, Schedule & FBS (Fermented Banana Stalk): Our pigs are piglets no more! We estimate the 10 pigs are between 30 and 40 kg in weight. Each week, our team works to make more and more FBS and decrease the amount of store food. The ultimate goal of feeding is to reduce the amount of store food to zero or almost nothing. As our pigs grow, the obvious roadblock to this goal is that the pigs keep eating more and more and we are not able to match their appetites without store food thus far. Our team works hard to try different type of staple feeding which includes mixing cracked rice with rice bran and leftover table scraps. Keeping up with making FBS has been bit of a challenge as well since our banana trees are not mature enough to cut; we have had to find banana stalks from elsewhere. Feeding our pigs requires use of about 15 Banana stalks per week. This requires lots of manual labor to cut and transport the stalks to our land. Thankfully, there is no shortage of banana trees in the surrounding area.

Natural Farming Pig Rearing (NFPR) Trainings & Outreach: As of mid-September, our team has trained approximately 60 students on the NPFR method at the Teacher Prep College (TPC) or 2/3rds of the total TPC student body. Training 2 was completed entirely by our land and training officer, U Tin Yu—his dedication and trainer improvement was quite impressive to the rest of the team. We were very pleased with the outcomes of training 2 and will continue to work towards improving our training for even more efficiency in the future. We have 1 more round of NFPR training with TPC students (about 20 students remaining), which has been postponed until January given TPC’s busy schedule. Preliminary results from the first 2 rounds of training are positive and students reflect that they learned many new techniques of animal husbandry and natural feeding they did not know before. Many were able to draw direct links to how these methods could be used in a Burmese village. In addition, students commented they would have liked even more time for the training to really digest the information and practice new skills. They will continue to visit the pigs as we get closer to selling the pigs and planning the next round—we anticipate including them in our reinvestment process. Currently the UPLift team is developing a standardized training manual (to be used by U Tin Yu and trainers) that will ensure an even more consistent and effective training delivery.

Round 2 NFPR Training in Pictures...