Week 2: Crop Rotation: Sabbath for the Land

Posted on by 施達基金會

Living in a metropolitan, we seldom pay attention on agricultural development. In fact, our lives are dependent on hard working farmers. Could you imagine what would happen if farmers all over the world take a one-week holiday?

Affected by chronic internal armed conflict, northern, southern and southeastern parts of Myanmar faced harmful consequences leading to destruction of community livelihood and land. Family can hardly stabilise their income, whereas many children were malnourished.

CEDAR’s partner, Myanmar Family Development Company Limited (MFDC), has been teaching community representatives from these areas organic farming methods that would restore soil quality and improve crop yield at their training centre near Yangon. In recent years, the training center began to apply teachings of the Bible to teach community representatives from these areas to practise crop rotation, in order to preserve Sabbath for land, recovery of soil quality and yield improvement.

Continue reading Week 2: Crop Rotation: Sabbath for the Land

Sustained Monsoon Storms and Floods Affecting Millions in South Asia

Posted on by 施達基金會
South Asia Floods 2016

The Monsoon storms and Typhoon were devastating to Bangladesh, Myanmar, India, and Nepal last year around this time. This year, millions of residents of South Asia continued to suffer from the floods and landslides caused by the violent weather, and are in great need of our help and prayers.

Continue reading Sustained Monsoon Storms and Floods Affecting Millions in South Asia

MFDC Agricultural Training Brings Hope to Farmers in Myanmar

Posted on by 施達基金會

[ePrayer – Pray for the farming and demonstrating project in Myanmar]

20130221_eprayer_c2

Give thanks for a successful completion of a two- week Agricultural Training attended by 25 farmers, two weeks field visit and a project evaluation by CEDAR Agricultural Consultant Mr Donn Armstrong. This time the training focused on growing of dry season crops, animal production and practical visits to commercial vegetable growers, flower growers, pig breeding and finishing unit and duck farms. The evaluation and field visits show that there was a good adoption of the ideas and principles promoted by previous course trainees in their area.

Pray for the farming and demonstrating project in Myanmar:

  • Pray that farmers can practice what they learned and know how to care for the soil and to rest one seventh of their land each year. (Seven Year Rest Crop Rotation)    
  • Pray for the future long term development plans for the farming and demonstration farm. There is need to increase planting to give sustainable annual income.  
  • Pray for upcoming discussion with partner based on recommendations from the evaluation report.

Myanmar MFDC Agricultural Development Project

Posted on by 施達基金會

In April 2011 thirty eight adults coming from 5 states and other high school youth attended a 2 week agricultural training organised by CEDAR’s partner MFDC in Yangon. CEDAR Agricultural Consultant D. Armstrong has been a volunteer of this programme in past 4 years. This year training lessons were on making of compost, preparation of banana planting materials, planting in rotation and fallow principles, techniques on sowing small seeds in a plot and planting seeds of different sizes and a session on rice & demonstration of fertilizer & lime for rice.

After this 2 week training, our consultant and one expert on rice cultivation visited Pathein Township to make a field visit to 3 course trainees who came from the Irrawaddy Delta region which was previously hit by a super cyclone in May 2008. One of the course trainees W is looking after a group of people who are mostly Christian and have been told to move out by their non-Christian families. W supports the villagers in spiritual and practical ways through the establishment of a community and guide the villagers how to get better yields from the land. W already seen an improvement on his paddy land after following the teaching from last year course, that is to add lime in the soil. This year he got 30 baskets of rice from each acre of paddy land, an increased from last year 25 baskets/acre. W is very hopeful by using improved rice seed, in three years time he will harvest 60 baskets/acre of land. This year two youths from his area also joined the training. One youth Zaw has attained Grade 9 education level but he is a very good farm worker, keen to learn new techniques and willing to share with other villagers. Zaw is learning to make heaps of compost as organic fertilizer. He is also helping to propagate fruit trees and trying new ways to manage insects and pests by applying non-chemical natural insecticides. Zaw will like to start a small nursery, something he learnt at the training, after this year planting of the paddy field season.  This way he can save some costs and at the same time can share his tree saplings to people in his community. CEDAR is delighted to witness how course participants benefit from the Agricultural training programme and ways that they are sharing their knowledge and fruits to people in their community.