Sharing farm practices
Bóthar received the
following story from
its project staff in China.
 MANY years ago in the village of
Gacha, the local nomads grazed their
sheep around the mountain pastures.
However, the government passed an
environment protection strategy
forbidding grazing in this area in 1999.
The nomad communities were forced
by the local government to become
settled farmers with very limited
cropland and farming skills. The
annual income of these families was
greatly reduced. The community
drifted into poverty and related social
problems started to occur.
The villagers needed to improve their
circumstances and some of them started to
raise dairy cattle on a small scale at home. One
of the biggest downsides of this was that none
of the families had experience of sustainable
management. Their milk yield was very low
and the farmers had to sell their produce to a
local station where they were unable to bargain
a fair price.
Some men in the Gacha decided to work
together to resist the fluctuant dairy market.
Wang Yongguo and other farmers in the
community got an idea to get all of the farmers
in the area to house all of their animals on one
professional farm. The farm would have professional workers who could deal with
concentrates, silage making, fodder processing
and running the parlour.
They could raise the
cows on the farm in a more sustainable and
intensive way. The participants would be able
to sell all the high quality produce directly to
the dairies and they would receive a more
stable price.
Cows are very important to these farmers,
as they are the only animals in the family to
provide regular income. It was not easy to
convince them to have a central farm. Also the
external inputs needed to build the dairy farm
would be expensive. Wang Yongguo
approached Alxa SEE Ecology Association, a
local NGO, who was implementing some
projects, such as agriculture, capacity building
and the sustainable income generation
approaches in the village. After they completed
a field study, the SEE pledged 50% of the
amount needed to build the farm if the
community could raise the remainder. Wang
Yongguo visited the neighbours door to door,
trying to convince them to join in.
In the
meantime, Heifer International China and
Bóthar started to work within this community,
to establish what level of assistance they could
give.
At the end of 2006 the HPI – SEE
integrated community project was formed.
This project, initiated by the SEE, is funded by
Bóthar and Heifer China. In association with
HPI-SEE, Wang Yongguo and the families in
the community set up Self-Help Groups in
which all people dealing with difficulties could
share their successes and problems. Heifer
provided the related support and training.
Project participants attended training courses
on animal husbandry and visited developed
dairy farms in the Sichuan Province to see how
their neighbours were making a success of
dairy farming. When their training was
complete, each participating family received a
dairy cow. Families soon realised the benefit of
sharing farm practices and became more
involved in the dairy farm establish by Wang
Yongguo.
Despite the initial resistance to the idea, the
farm now has 97 dairy cows.
The community contacted the dairy
industry to negotiate a fair price for their
produce. Due to the scale of their farm, the
farmers were given a contract price which far
exceeded their previous best price. This was
mainly due to the stable and high quality yield
that was being produced. Now, families no
longer have to worry about fluctuating milk
prices.
Wang Yongguo and other participants also
got news this year that the government will pay
them a dairy subsidy in order to encourage the
community based dairy industry. This subsidy will be invested in new farm technology. He
says, ‘This road is so hard for walking, but we
just keep on walking. Thanks to all the people
who help us to keep on walking. I believe that
if all people work together we can make great
difference.’
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