I have visited dozens of dairy farms across the central regions of Nepal, helping each one with the individual training requests and issues. From soil management to cheese making, to helping communities get a fairer price at markets – I’ve certainly been putting my experience as a Somerset farmer to good use whilst I’ve been here.
Although it’s been very fulfilling to work together with the famers to find answers to their agricultural problems, it’s really opened my eyes to the lack of basic training they have received in the past. There is a huge desire amongst the small scale dairy farmers I’ve met to learn more.
One of the farming families I’ve been working closely with
Very excitingly, I’ve managed to find an amazing local partner who have agreed to help me train up more dairy farmers with a wider range of skills to improve the quality of their everyday work.
A new partnership
As part of my work as a VSO volunteer, I have engaged with an organisation called Forward Nepal. This experienced team of Nepalese started in the 1990’s running pilot training schemes on good practice on a wide range of agricultural activities.
If the pilot projects work, Forward Nepal then attempt to take it to the government for scaling up with much larger funding. Due to my expertise, our pilot project will be based around the milk chain, ensuring more dairy farmers can produce quality milk to sell.
With farmers relying on each and every rupee that comes in from their produce, any improvement on a farmer’s income due to better quality produce will have an immediate benefit to families. It could make drastic changes like their children being able to go to school, being able to afford medical help, or even persuading young men to not migrate to other countries for more money. Needless to say I’m keen to get this pilot up and running to give all farmers this better quality of life.
Training is still in its planning phases as we are concentrating on making it easy to follow and providing new information that will have the most impact.
Sharing top tips
One of the points that I’m really keen to impress upon farmers is that it’s unnecessary to cook livestock’s feed, which seems to be the norm here. It doesn’t benefit the livestock in any way, and by not cooking the feed, this also cuts costs of the amount of firewood used by each family. An added benefit is that women usually have this job, so they will have much more time without this task. It’s a win-win situation – cut costs and income rises.
Another worrying and common practice is using normal laundry detergents to wash milk containers. Not only does this mean the milk can taste soapy, it can also leave it very unsafe to drink. I’m on the lookout for a low cost chemical that will safely clean even when using cold water.
Our plans so far include making pictorial reminders of some of the basics of good dairy farming that each farm can have a copy of, so all farmers can follow the guidance regardless of their literacy level. For those that have mobile phones we are also going to use text messages for extra reminders or any new top tips, and use local radio for farming updates.
Spreading the word far and wide
We are also in the process of finding ‘lead farmers’ – confident farmers who can take ownership of training their peers after I have left Nepal and the training scheme has been scaled up. This is an essential part of the plan so it can be a change that is truly long term.
The government backs us too
One of the key (and most frustrating!) parts of long lasting change is ensuring local government are fully behind your work. Luckily Forward Nepal already have an established relationship with the government, and we managed to meet with the Food Safety Board just last week. I was astounded when the Head of the Board wanted to make our dairy training a policy before the pilot had even happened.
This is an enormous step for us! We’ve persuaded him to let us do the pilot so we can really fine tune the training for maximum benefit to famers, but we have in writing a promise that it will receive further government backing.
Progress
This fast-paced partnership has already made impressive leaps to help thousands of farmers across the central region of Nepal. I hope you are proud of what your loyal support of VSO is managing to achieve. I must get back to it now, but let’s just say – watch this space!
Best wishes,
Simon
