Tag Archives: organics

Even Rotten Fish Can Be a Gift

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Original story by Kanyapan Chamchuen, intern for Heifer Thailand from Naresuan University. Photos by Kanyapan Chamchuen and Heifer Thailand staff.

Mr. Suraphol Takham, Heifer Thailand program
officer (second from left) and Kae Noy villagers
built a check-dam to store water for the dry season.
The sunset was almost gone, and the weather was getting cooler as we ascended to a higher altitude. It was hard to drive in the dark with no traffic lights, and we had to be careful not to hit the cows relaxing in the middle of the road. I learned that these animals love to lie on the asphalt road after dusk because it is nice and warm from the heat stored during the day. The program officer from Heifer Thailand explained that the cows live as a herd in the forest, eating wild grass, during the cool season. During the rainy season, when grass may be easily grown, they will live in a corral. 

Life is more laid-back in the rural area than in the city. Everything seems to be slow and relaxed. It was nice to open the car windows and feel the breeze, but the smell of rotten fish in the back of the truck interrupted us occasionally. When cars passed us on our journey, I found myself worrying about the safety of the cattle on the road. It even felt a bit like we were trespassing as we drove past them.

A community facilitator accepts
the gift of rotten fish to distribute
to Kae Noy villagers.
The purpose of our trip was to visit the self-help groups at Kae Noy community in Chiang Dao district, Chiang Mai province, to follow up on the project’s progress and give them the rotten fish. We reached our destination quite late in the evening, and we stayed at Community Facilitator Sakdawut Jasae’s house. Jasae greeted us with a sincere smile. Before we could rest, we had to carry the rotten fish from the truck. “This is a special gift for the villagers,” said Program Officer Suraphol Takham. I was thinking, “What? This is stinky, rotten fish, so who would want to have it?!” Takham continued, “This is very good organic fertilizer, and the villagers will learn to use any leftovers from their cooking to make the compost for their farms. This will help them be safe by not using chemical fertilizers and will improve the quality of the soil.” Then it made sense. Rotten fish is good for farmers, as well as the environment.

Kae Noy villagers plant
trees during a
reforestation activity.
During our stay at Sakdawut’s house, he shared with us that few families did farming before, since most of the villagers migrating from Burma had no farmland. While in Burma, many villagers were involved with drug trafficking, while some sold forest products. The lack of water during the dry season also made farming a challenge. “When Heifer implemented the project here in late 2009, the trainings were on the values of one’s life, as well as other trainings to enhance our capacities, especially on animal management and environmental preservation. We also organized environmental preservation tasks regularly, such as reforestation and check-dam building to slow down water flow during rainy season and to store the water for the dry season,” said Sakdawut, with smiling eyes. 

Suraphol, the program officer, said that the life has gradually improved for the villagers since implementation of the Heifer project and they are no longer involved with drugs or illegal labor.

Joining this field trip has been a good learning experience for me. With results like friendship, happiness, cohesiveness and security, the success is immeasurable. I also realized the benefit of rotten fish. I hope that, after I graduate from the university, I will have a chance to do something good for our people and society.

How to Choose Coffee with a Conscience

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The next time you buy coffee, make sure you are environmentally aware about where you coffee comes from. The words Fair Trade, Shade-Grown, and Organic are just a couple of buzzwords that are now being used to describe your cup-of-joe.

Haven’t heard of these words? Here is what they mean:

What’s shade-grown coffee?

  • “Shade-grown” generally describes coffee grown under a canopy of diverse species of shade trees, often on small farms using traditional techniques.
  • Shade-grown coffee, in contrast to sun-grown or “technified” coffee, provides food and shelter for songbirds, as well as other animals and plants.
  • Shade trees also provide natural mulch, which reduces the need for chemical fertilizers. Up to 40 species of trees can be found on traditionally managed shade coffee plantations; these trees protect the coffee plants that grow beneath them from rain and sun, help maintain soil quality, reduce the need for weeding and aid in pest control. Organic matter from the shade trees reduces erosion, contributes nutrients to the soil, and prevents metal toxicities.
  • As rainforests disappear, shade coffee farms offer one of the last places for birds to feed and rest in many tropical regions. In addition to birds, shade coffee plantations provide habitat for orchids, insects, mammals (such as bats), reptiles, and amphibians.

What’s organic coffee?

  • Organic coffee growing strives for a balance with nature, using methods and materials which are of low impact to the environment.
  • Organic farming replenishes and maintains soil fertility, eliminates the use of toxic chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and builds a biologically diverse agriculture. In a natural ecosystem, nature constantly works to correct imbalances. Organic farmers do the same by selecting the most environmentally friendly solutions to the pest and disease problems that affect their crops.
  • When a grower or processor is certified organic, a public or private organization verifies that it meets or exceeds standards defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)

What is fair trade coffee?

  • Certified Fair Trade coffee has been traded and sold according to international fair trade criteria, which includes:
    • Farmers are guaranteed a minimum price for their coffee. If world price rises above this floor price, farmers will be paid a small premium above market price.
    • Coffee importers provide credit to farmers against future sales.
    • Importers and roasters agree to develop direct, long-term trade relationships with producer groups, cutting out middlemen (or “coyotes”) and bringing greater commercial stability to an extremely unstable market.
  • The fair trade movement is based on the idea that producers in developing countries are capable of achieving economic success provided they receive fair prices in international markets for what they produce.
Learn more about organic, shade-grown and/or Fair Trade coffee at

Watch about Heifer’s work with small-holder farmers here:

Allin Kausay

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Good Living. That’s what Allin Kausay means. It’s the name of a Heifer Peru project in the Cusco region of Peru. This project, which is only about five months in, plans to contribute to improved food systems and living conditions for 1,540 families. Heifer does this by helping them plan the management of their resources, implement agroecology, link to local markets, and involve them in processes that impact local and regional policies for rural families.

Friday morning we visited Dolores Delgado on her farm in the Huachanccay community about an hour from Cusco. Dolores’ farm is small, but very well organized and well-kept. In just the short five-month life of the project’s activities, the practical benefits of agroecological production are clear. In the next four or five years, Dolores intends to be a certified agroecological producer. She is already one of the biggest sellers of guinea pigs in the areal. Right now, she gets about $8 per guinea pig. Once she’s certified, she’ll get nearly $15 per. To earn even higher an income, Dolores will be able to sell an organic breeding male guinea pig for $36 each.

Have a look at her farm:

Heifer Peru and Headquarters staff arrive at Dolores’ farm.

Common on Heifer participants’ farms are project-related murals,
painted with colored clays. A plastered building for guinea pigs is a big deal here.

Cuy Breeding “Happy Little Farm”
A sign welcomes us into Delores’ guinea pig room.

We must step in ash before entering the guinea pig house so we don’t bring in contaminants.

Wire on the ceiling helps keep rats and weasels away from the guinea pigs.

Dolores shows us her guinea pig cages, which her son helped her build.
There are metal pans under all of the cages to allow for the collection of manure.

The pipes in the back allow Dolores to capture urine, which is high in nitrogen.

Dolores shows us a breakdown of her guinea pig production in terms of inputs, costs and profits.

Dolores shows us the nutritional breakdown of guinea pigs, which are highly nutritious.

Dolores grows fodder for her guinea pigs. She has a basket of ryegrass and barley.

Dolores also makes regular feed for her animals.

In addition to saving money by growing and processing fodder and food for her guinea pigs,
Dolores also cuts costs by making her own medecine. She keeps her animals very healthy,
so they don’t often require medecine at all. What she’s holding is a salve for grass cuts they sometimes get.

Pierre Ferrari gets to hold a guinea pig.

Dolores is so proud of her farm and pleased to show it off to us.

Dolores practices worm composting with guinea pig manure.

Once the compost is ready, Dolores ferments it with water in a drum.
The jug is full of what we would call “compost tea.”

Dolores’ husband uses a basic sprayer to distribute the compost tea.

Using organic fertilizer is already paying off. These are fodder crops for the guinea pigs.

They’ve also used the fertilizer on their family vegetable garden with great success.

And what would a Peruvian farm (or street, for that matter) be without a sleeping dog?

Trainer of Trainers Teaches Us

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You might not guess it when you first meet him, but Mahmoud Conteh is a highly educated agronomist who teaches others how to improve their crop yields the sustainable way. In truth, Mahmoud grew up desperately poor and under-educated in the Port Loko District of Sierra Leone, like the vast majority of his countrymen. But he had the good fortune to join a Heifer International self help group that partners with the non-profit Mercy Ships.
While anchored near Freetown, Mercy Ships personnel, working with Heifer Sierra Leone staff, trained Mahmoud and others in sustainable farming techniques. Working with animals supplied by Heifer and local seeds and soils, Mahmoud and his group have abandoned the traditional slash-and-burn farming techniques that deplete soils, and adopted sustainable methods that restore nutrients to the soil and vastly improve the yields from their crops.
Listen as he teaches us why composting is better than fertilizer.

How Heifer Projects Are Promoting a Healthy Environment

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On April 18, Worldwatch Institute’s blog, Nourishing the Planet, published a list of 15 ways agriculture can “promote a healthier environment and a more food-secure future.” In honor of Earth Day 2011, we would like to explore these 15 ways and how Heifer’s projects around the world are addressing these issues. We’ll do this in three separate posts, matching five Heifer projects with the corresponding Nourishing the Planet concepts.


1. Guaranteeing the Right to Food
The goals of the National More Organic for Everyone (MORE) Project are to increase organic producers’ supply, improve access to high-quality organic food by underserved communities in Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas City, Minnesota, New York and Wisconsin and identify opportunities to strengthen the linkages between organic producers and communities in food desert areas. This project is helping 60 farmers initiate or make the transition to organic production while providing organic food to 600 food-insecure families.
In the words of a MORE Project participant in Georgia:
My name is Alfred, 64 and a half years young. And having lost my job, this is the best thing that could have ever happened to me, preparing myself to become an organic backyard gardener. The experiences and classes I am having I would have never gotten from books alone. Specifically when working hand-in-hand with the volunteer farmers, I am learning to do various things in different ways and learning to adapt them to my specific needs and requirements.

Since I started the project, I finished building several raised and standard beds, which are planted, harvested and producing already. I’ve improved my methods of seeding, learned the proper way to compost and learned the principles of crop rotation, planning and companion planting. I’ve also started building a walk-in hoop-house. And if everything works out okay, I’m planning to sell at local farmers markets soon.



2. Harnessing the Nutritional and Economic Potential of Vegetables.

Heifer’s Empowering Marginalized Communities in Northern Thailand Project assists 1,170 minority families in nine poor communities. Families receive sows, piglets, fruit saplings, crop seeds and vegetable seeds. In this project, kitchen gardens are one of the activities that help villagers reduce daily food expenses.
Mr. Alu and Mrs. Muba Yaesaw are participants of the project. Before, the family made their living from selling wild products at Wednesday and Saturday markets. But after becoming project participants, they began growing a kitchen garden for home consumption and sale. They grow both native and wild vegetables. Their family’s nutrition has improved from the more diverse diet. In addition to selling at the market two days a week, they sell their vegetables from a mobile shop within the village and nearby villages and at special events. Mr. Alu said that after growing their own vegetables, they did not have to buy vegetables for more than a year. They also shared vegetables with their neighbors and guests who came to their village.

3. Reducing Food Waste

To diversify the income streams of families benefiting from the gift of livestock, Heifer Sierra Leone entered into a partnership in 2010 with the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA). This partnership has resulted in the distribution of high-yielding cassava varieties to supplement project families’ agricultural inputs, diet and income. Cassava, also called yuca or manoic, is a woody shrub native to South America. Cassava is the third-largest source of carbohydrates for meals in the world. However, one of the challenges of cassava production is its relatively short post-harvest storage capacity. To preserve this staple food year-round in areas where there is no refrigeration, it is often processed into garri, a kind of cereal that keeps for long period. It is sometimes turned into fried chips and eaten as a snack. An additional benefit of cassava is that the peels are good for feeding animals, and the leaves are made into a nutritious stew.
The Tongea Women Farmers in Kailahun district are one of the groups that has benefitted from Heifer’s partnership with IITA. Along with various trainings they received from Heifer, the group also received cassava cuttings, which they planted in a group garden. Because their cassava production was so successful, IITA contributed further to the project by having two cassava-processing centers built. These facilities have become a resource for the women who engage in homemade garri processing and other cassava products. Garri and other foods processed from cassava sell at higher market value than the cassava plant itself, and the women are now learning that by adding value to their farm products, they are able to generate real income to improve their livelihoods and those of their family members.
4. Feeding Cities.
The population of El Alto in La Paz, Bolivia, largely consists of families who have migrated from the Bolivian highlands. As part of the rural-to-urban migration process, these families often exchange their healthy, traditional diets of Andean crops for por quality, highly processed and carbohydrate-rich foods, resulting in the high rates of both malnutrition and obesity among the urban poor. Heifer’s Restoring the Consumption of Native Foods in El Alto, La Paz Project promotes food security in eight peri-urban communities in El Alto. Heifer works to improve the eating habits of school children and their families through advocacy with local decision-makers, strengthening of the network of social control of the School Boards, and community awareness-raising as a strategy to recover and consume the vast diversity of healthy traditional Andean products.
5. Getting More Crop per Drop.
Small farmers in the Piura region of Peru live in poverty. Approximately 35,000 families live in this territory, and their livelihoods are vitally dependent on the region’s ecosystem. They are affected by El Nino floods, which deteriorate roads and isolate communities. They are equally affected by subsequent drought years, which come as regularly as El Nino and bring with them forest fires. The Building a Sustainable Way of Life Project is turning the threat of El Nino into a major opportunity for families living in the dry forest. During the yet years, the project replants trees, bushes and pastures; builds grain storage sheds and improves housing conditions to protect against heavy rains. Communal wells are being improved, and equipment is provided to ensure the availability and quality of water in yet years and dry.

How Heifer is Helping the World Feed Itself

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Earlier today I posted about a Heifer project participant being included in The Economist’s report, The 9 billion-people question: A special report on feeding the world. And if you’re keyed in to media coverage of sustainable agriculture, you’ve probably seen the conversation around the web on the United Nations Report, Agroecology and the Right to Food (Mark Bittman has written about it on the New York Times Opinionator blog, and Paula Crossfield for Huffington Post, to name a couple).
Both reports look at the seemingly impossible challenge of feeding all 9 billion people who are estimated to be living on Earth by 2050, and they offer different perspectives. Will we feed the world by investing in the highest-yielding crop or livestock species? Or by investing in agroecology? (Heifer has been practicing agroecology all over the world since the mid 1980s and established an Agroecology Initiative in 2000.)
I worry, though, that the theme of “feeding the world” diverts our attention from the local, on-the-ground work that needs to be done. Heifer takes on the task of ending hunger and poverty with this sort of community approach, and it’s an approach that we’ve proven works.
Ours is a bottom-up approach. We work with the very poor to help them rebuild assets and develop agriculturally and economically active livelihoods. We build strong community groups where people work together to share their limited resources and to plan their vision of a better life. At this stage, much training takes place. Participants learn improved ways to tend animals, how to best use animal by-products, water management and erosion control practices, and often even improved literacy and leadership skills.
A transformation process begins to happen within the community when the members realize that improvements in knowledge lead to improvements in health, income, relationships and eventually to their values. We call this a holistic transformation.
Once this transformation is underway, the community uses their knowledge to impact the policies, systems and practices that impact their surroundings (both societal and environmental). Community empowerment at the grassroots level can lead to changes in infrastructure to help build local commerce–roads, electricity, commodity storage and transportation, as well as market associations and structures.
We’ve seen our model work again and again, in all corners of the world (and even in our own backyard). Our challenge now is to ratchet up this model so we can begin to see our impacts on a larger scale, as we have with our East Africa Dairy Development Project. As communities begin to feed themselves, international hunger statistics will begin to come down. The need for wealthy countries to ship commodities to poor countries will decrease–countries will be growing their own food.
Left: Bolivia (photo by Geoff Bugbee), Top: Cambodia (photo by Matt Bradley)
Botton: Armenia (photo by Russ Powell), Right: Zambia (photo by Jake Lyell
And then the question of whether conventional agriculture is more productive or if sustainable/organic/agroecological agriculture is better will become a non-issue.
Can we do it alone? Of course not. We need help from individuals like you, from partner nonprofits and non-government organizations, and from governments–wealthy and poor alike.

Small Farms in Big China

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The back-to-your-roots small farming revolution that’s keeping farmer’s market tables brimming in the United States is gaining a toehold in China. Much like in the U.S., young people are off-ramping from higher-paying careers in finance and such in favor of long but satisfying days spent working in the dirt.

The draw, according to a story in The Washington Post, is largely health-related. In a country where melamine-laced milk and tainted baby formula have caused death and injury in recent years, some are looking to provide clean, healthy alternatives. Proponents of organic farming say they’re hoping to make a dent in China’s significant pollution problems.

But just like in the United States, success for small farmers is hard-won. Organic crops fall to insect infestation, and Chinese consumers are reluctant to buy the more expensive organic produce that looks lumpy and ugly next to the gleaming waxed displays in supermarkets. On top of all that, Chinese farmers don’t even have the cache American ones do, since working the land there is seen not as noble or romantic, but simply as one of the worst jobs you could have.

Will this organic farming trend catch on in China for the long-term? It seems too early to tell, although it certainly has its devotees. One woman, who chucked city life to work rented land on Chongming Island, told the Post reporter she was wowed by how good homegrown food can taste.

This summer, she harvested their first tomato of the season. And she described the pleasure of biting into the red fruit and realizing for the first time what a real, unadulterated tomato tasted like.

“There’s nothing like that,” she said, “in the city.”

Size Isn’t Everything

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Photo from flickr/~Duncan~. Creative Commons.

Eating your veggies may not be the cure-all it once was. That’s because today’s fruits and vegetables appear to have fewer nutrients than produce once had, according to an article from Prevention magazine and MSNBC.
“In 2004, Donald Davis, PhD, a former researcher with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin, led a team that analyzed 43 fruits and vegetables from 1950 to 1999 and reported reductions in vitamins, minerals, and protein. Using USDA data, he found that broccoli, for example, had 130 mg of calcium in 1950. Today, that number is only 48 mg. What’s going on?”

The theory is, modern agricultural techniques–reliance on synthietic fertilizer, breeding for traits like extreme size and early maturation–have left us with large but anemic vegetables.
“A different story is playing out with organic produce. ‘By avoiding synthetic fertilizers, organic farmers put more stress on plants, and when plants experience stress, they protect themselves by producing phytochemicals,’ explains Alyson Mitchell, PhD, a professor of nutrition science at the University of California, Davis.”

The article does include tips on getting the most nutrients from your vegetables, even if you can’t go organic–buy smaller veggies and bright colors, hit the farmers’ market, eat them when they’re fresh, and don’t overcook them.
Is this something you already suspected? If so, how do you ensure you’re eating the right veggies, not the wimpy ones?

Beyond Local

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Photo from Flickr/acnatta. Creative Commons.

We’ve all heard the mantras, seen the bumper stickers, puzzled over the portmanteaus–”Buy local,” “locavores,” “glocal.” But what if local is not the simple solution we’ve been told? What if eating locally, in some instances, can compromise your access to fresh food or unnecessarily skew market prices? That’s the premise of a recent post at the Atlantic by Barry Estabrook, former contributing editor at Gourmet magazine. Estabrook writes:
“It has all but become an article of faith that sourcing food locally is the most sustainable alternative to our current global food production system. But there is a growing body of evidence that local may be only part of the answer.

“Speaking at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Cooking for Solutions event last week, Richard Pirog, the associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, said larger regional food economies might be the solution.”
This approach–eating regionally, or within one’s watershed–is an idea long explored by Heifer International. In a fall 2009 article in “The Exchange” newsletter (PDF), Arthur Getz Escudero took a look at Heifer’s efforts, particularly in North America, and introduced many of us to a new term: the “foodshed.”