Netherlands initiated farming systems project in Myanmar

In a pilot project initiated by the Netherlands agricultural counsellor in Myanmar, Wageningen Research is creating the basis for a farming systems project that will run for the next 4 years. The project will explore feasible pathways towards sustainable intensification of Myanmar production systems.

 

The focus will be on 4 key objectives, robustness, resilience, sustainability and competitiveness. The project starts with enumeration of existing farm types to get sufficient data on the current farm performance. Based on the analysis of strong and weak points of the systems (tested against the objectives), development pathways for the systems will be proposed. These pathways will detail the agro-ecology and agronomic approach towards the system management as well as more socio economic aspects. These development pathways will be piloted and tested with group of farmers. The project is a collaboration of Wageningen Research with the Department of Agriculture and the Direction Agricultural Research (DOA and DAR respectively) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation of Myanmar. The final aim is to support sustainable intensification enabling Myanmar farms to produce good quality and quantity of crops in a sustainable way, with increased resilience to climate change effects. This contributes to improved incomes and improved livelihoods and food security. Along the way of this intensification innovative technology of companies from the Netherlands can play an important role.

 

The pilot is on the way and will explore how the 4 year project can be tailored to the specific context of Myanmar In January the enumerators were trained in the use of the MonQi tool to document the farm activities. Participants came from as well the ministry as from private organisations like East West Foundation and Mercycorps. MonQI is a web based registration tool that allows to document and store farming data, for subsequent analysis.