Achieving Stronger Results in Myanmar: Daw Nang Saw Kyi’s Story
SHAN STATE, MYANMAR – Daw Nang Saw Kyi, age 53, is no stranger to agriculture. She has worked as a vegetable collector, buying vegetables directly from farmers and selling them in town. She is also a longtime farmer herself and grows both rice and vegetables, including cucumber, okra, cauliflower, sweet corn, and eggplant.
Given her commitment to vegetables, she was highly motivated to participate in the vegetable production training sessions held by East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer (EWS-KT) in a village near her own.
In addition to mastering the technical knowledge covered during the training, she discussed some of the techniques—from seed selection to land preparation to crop management—in greater depth with EWS-KT staff. After building her confidence in these new methods, she decided to implement them in her own fields, starting with cucumber and okra.
New Skills in Farm Planning and Cultivation
The importance of plant spacing was just one of the insights Daw Nang Saw Kyi gained from the training. Before, she was unfamiliar with optimal plant spacing and the ideal plant population for a particular plot size. Crowded fields, she learned, are more prone to pests and diseases and are more difficult to monitor and manage.
By following the plant spacing guidelines for each crop, she can also now determine how much high-quality seed she needs to purchase for a specific area, and she knows how to calculate the cost based on the total number of seeds in the packet. This helps her plan ahead for the season.
Applying several of the new techniques in her fields, she discovered firsthand the benefits of raised beds. “I used to grow my vegetables in a plain plot, but it is much easier to take care of the plants and to harvest the vegetables in raised beds,” she said.
She adopted fertilizer application methods that reduce the amount of fertilizer needed while delivering nutrients directly to the plants’ root zone. She also began to implement sturdy trellising techniques to support her climbing cucumber plants.
“The yield and quality of the cucumber fruits are much better with these new practices,” she reported. From her 400-square-meter plot, she harvested 1,500 kilograms of cucumbers, earning the equivalent of US$357. With costs of US$153, her profit totaled US$204.
Since her first training session with EWS-KT, Daw Nang Saw Kyi has gained the experience and knowledge to effectively use improved cultivation techniques on a variety of vegetable crops, and the positive results she has seen have encouraged her to share these methods with other farmers in her community.
Daw Nang Saw Kyi received training from EWS-KT under the Fostering Resilience Through Vegetables (Foster Veg) project, supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and HEKS/EPER. Focusing on southern Shan state, this initiative works to improve the income and resilience of smallholder farmers through skills building and market development.
