ADB promotes organic farming in Mekong basin

ADB promotes organic farming in Mekong basin

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is willing to give further assistance in organic farming to Greater Mekong countries on the East-West Economic Corridor, aiming to promote food security in the region and take advantage of export markets.

Following smallholders assistance projects funded by the ADB over the last few years, organic farmers' groups are now earning higher incomes and their livelihoods have improved.

However, the numbers of farmers' groups producing organic fruit and vegetables on the east-west corridor are still few and most farmers still have a poor understanding of the methods needed to produce organic crops and importance of not using chemicals.

Organic farmers' groups in Pakkha village, Kaysone district, Savannakhet province and Poung Phao village, Vientiane province are part of a smallholders' project funded by the ADB but packaging methods need to be improved if they are to achieve optimum value adding.

Head of the Pakkha organic farmers' group, Mr Keo Bounma spoke to Vientiane Times during a GMS press tour 2013 in Laos and Thailand from December 5-11.

He said it is hard to produce good crops using organic methods in the first few seasons but the resulting fruits and vegetables command higher prices and are healthy and safe.

On average, the Pakkha group members make around 3-4 million kip a month from selling their crops, Mr Keo said.

The income from their produce helps raise them from poverty, but they still have to save money to buy necessary equipment and support their children's studies, he explained.

To encourage organic farmers' groups to produce sufficient fruit and vegetables to supply the domestic market and also export in the future, they need more farmers' groups to join in order to give them economies of scale.

Implementing the Greater Mekong Sub-region Core Agriculture Support Programme is part of a larger framework, said ADB Regional Cooperation Economist, Mr Rattanatay Luanglatbandith.

The project aims to make the countries of the Greater Mekong Sub-region recognised as leading producers of safe food, using climate-friendly agricultural practices, and integrating them into global markets through regional economic corridors.

The project will promote the adoption of a Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) among farmers as an alternative to third party certifications and as a way to reduce the prohibitive certification costs for quality guarantee certification of agricultural products.

Excessive certification costs keep smallholders, particularly organic farmers in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), from integrating into modern value chains that can broaden their market reach.

This project activity is designed to build farm level capacity in agrifood certification and food traceability for smallholder farmers and will help create a competitive agriculture sector in the GMS.

This way the projects intends to improve market access for the farmers' products, including cross-border trade, improve their income and contribute to expanding areas of organic agrifood production in the GMS. It will include both field activities and pilot projects.

vientiane times