Hoang Thi Tham, Hoang Thi Tao, Le Viet Ly1 and Bui Van Chinh1
Women's Union, Bac Thai province
Abstract
Feeding pigs with sugar cane juice and agricultural by-products was introduced into Bac Thai province in October 1993 with the active support of the Women's Union. After 3 years of implementation of the program, the technology has been shown to be effective, and with good acceptance by the farmers. The salient features have been:
Key words: Participatory technology development, pig production, sugar cane juice, women, on-farm demonstrations
Introduction
We are very glad to be the representatives of women of ethnic groups and the Women's Union of Bac Thai province to present our success and share our experience and ideas in the process of applying the technology of animal production with sugar cane juice and agricultural by-products.
General status of the province
Geography and population
Bac Thai is a mountainous province in the North of Vietnam. The land area of 6,500 km2 is 80 km distant from Hanoi. The mountains and forests occupy ⅔ of the total area of the province.
1 National Institute of Animal Husbandry, Hanoi
The administration structure of Bac Thai province consists of 10 districts and one provincial town. Bac Thai has a population of 1.3 million of which women comprises 51%. There are 8 ethnic groups and the ethnic minority makes up 30% of the population.
There are 220,000 households in the province, 70% of which are based on agriculture and forestry. The living standard of the people is still poor. Food per capita per year is 250–270 kg. The people's intellectual standard is low, the knowledge on scientific technology of the people is limited. So, the productivity of food crops and livestock is not high.
The functions (roles) of the Provincial Women's Union (PWU)
The PWU has the following functions:
Plantation:
Rice and some secondary crops such as maize, sweet potato, cassava, groundnut, soybean are the main food crops. Industrial crops consists of tea, fruit tree and sugar cane.
Infrastructure facilities are very poor, and processing and marketing efforts encounter many difficulties, especially for sugar cane. In Bac Thai province, almost all the sugar cane has to be processed by the artisan method. The price of sugar cane is not stable, so the economics of sugar cane production is low.
Table 1: Technical training and technology transfer on farms for women.
No. | No. | Piace courses participants | |
1993 | 1 | 16 | Hien Minh, La Hien |
1994 | 3 | 140 | La Hien, Vo Nhai |
1995 | 1 | 50 | Dan Tien, Vo Nhai |
1996 | 2 | 90 | Dai Tu, Dong Hy, Vo Nhai |
Feeding pigs with sugar cane juice and agricultural by-products was introduced into the province in October 1993. The Bac Thai Women's Union considered that it was an opportunity to help women in the sugar cane production area to use products made by sugar cane and agricultural by-products to develop their animal production and increase the income.
The results of implementation of the project “utilization of sugar cane juice as feed for pigs”
Training and technical assistance
Technical assistance is offered by the National Institute
of Animal Husbandry, some funds have been provided
by SAREC and special support is given by Dr. Preston.
The project has been accepted and implemented by
PWU of Bac Tai since October 1993. Training courses
have been an important activity as can be seen in table
1. The number of households using the technology has
steadily increased (Table 2).
Table 2: Households participating in the project
Year | No. households | |
Received loan | No loan | |
1993 | 8 | 9 |
1994 | 20 | 30 |
1995–1996 | 30 | 112 |
The results of feeding pigs with sugar cane juice
The feeding system is based on fresh sugar cane juice
which is supplemented by other local resources such
as maize meal, cassava roots, soya bean meal,
residual yeast from rice wine making and vegetables.
The ensiling of cassava leaves and groundnut stems
as partial replacement for the protein component has
also been investigated.
Table 3: Performance of the pigs
93–94 | 94–95 | 95–96 | |
No. households | 8 | 9 | 11 |
Number of pigs | 32 | 40 | 48 |
Initial weight, kg | 33.7 | 18.62 | 14.01 |
Final weight, kg | 85.4 | 73.49 | 68.13 |
Weight gain, g/day | 554 | 546 | 572 |
Impact of the project
After 3 years of implementation of the program, the technology has been shown to be effective, and with good acceptance by the farmers. The salient features have been:
Direction and suggestions
Bac Thai WU would like to express sincere thanks to SAREC, to the regional FAO project (GCP/RAS/143/JPN), to Dr. Preston, other international experts, leaders and technical staff of NIAH, who have supported us in ideas and materials to implement this project successfully in our province.
We hope that, our collaboration will be continued.