Bac Thai women's acceptance of the technology of pig production with sugar cane juice and agricultural by-products

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:

• The monthly weight gain of the pigs is about 14–18 kg, in some households it is 22–25 kg, while for pigs raising based on traditional method, the monthly weight gain is only 7–12 kg.
• The number of pigs per household has increased from 2 to 4 and even 6, while some households rear 10–20 pigs in the harvesting season of sugarcane.
• The living standards of the households have improved. Before the project, many households were very poor. Now they have beds, wardrobes, motorcycles, and television sets.
• The alternative presented by feeding sugar cane juice to pigs permitted the households to use broken canes for this purpose, which otherwise would have been wasted as the juice from broken cane is not suitable for making sugar.

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:

• To protect interest of women in accordance with state policy on equality between women and men.
• To exercise supervision and control over the implementation of Government policy related to women and children's interests.
• To train women to increase their knowledge for social matters, children care and family planning.
• To help women to gain knowledge on agricultural and forestry technology, handicrafts, income generation activities and improvement of their lives
• To promote credit program for women so as help them to invest in their production, and establish demonstration projects to be visited by women from other districts and communes.

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.

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

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

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:

• The monthly weight gain of the pigs is about 14–18 kg, in some households it is 22–25 kg, while for pig raising based on traditional method, the monthly weight gain is only 7–12 kg.
• The number of pigs per household has increased from 2 to 4 and even 6, while some households rear 10–20 pigs in the harvesting season of sugarcane.
• The living standards of the households have improved. Before the project, many households were very poor. Now they have beds, wardrobes, motorcycles, and television sets (eg: Mrs. Huong and Mrs. Binh in La Hien.
• The alternative presented by feeding sugar cane juice to pigs permitted the households to use broken canes for this purpose, which otherwise would have been wasted as the juice from broken cane is not suitable for making sugar.
• Five biodigesters were installed, which contributed to environmental protection and fuel need in the countryside.
• In 1995 the price of sugar cane in the whole country decreased sharply, especially in Bac Thai. The climate was very dry for long time and sugar cane grew very badly. In the project area, the farmers got positive results in feeding pigs with sugar cane juice. For example, in households in La Hien and Dan Tien commune, the women said to each other “Farmers lost money in sugar cane growing, but earned from using sugar cane juice for pig feeding”.
• The success of the program contributed to enhancing the role of the women in the family and in society. The women were provided knowledge on how to invest in production. The organization of the WU was strenghened, and the prestige of women in technology transfer process was improved. The process contributed to the programme of hunger eradication and poverty reduction of the province.

Direction and suggestions

• Continue to disseminate the success of the program in the WU and facilitate women to apply the technology.
• Bac Thai province would like to cooperate further with international organizations and institutions in the country to expand this technology to the farmers, especially to women.
• We would like FAO and SAREC to provide more funds to expand the project by:
  • Training farmers for new technology.
  • Provide new crop varieties and animal breeds with optimum production performance.
  • Investment in expansion of installation of biodigesters.
  • Study visits to other successful projects sites.

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.