Ric – Page 6 – Goducate … Go And Educate!

2013-07-02

Goducate discusses plans with village chiefs in Lailara, Sumba, to cultivate Moringa

Sumba is an island in Eastern Indonesia that is about 10 times the area of Singapore, but which has about only one-tenth the population of the latter. The Sumbanese are poorer than other Indonesians, and a high percentage have been infected by malaria. Infant mortality is also high. Water is scarce during the dry season and the women and children have to travel several kilometers to fetch water while the men are at work. Most of the original vegetation has now gone because of slash-burn clearing for planting of corn, cassava, and other cash crops. Past attempts to reforest the limestone hills have failed due to absence of social marketing.

A couple of weeks ago a Goducate team was in Lailara (population: 1,030), a typical village in Sumba. Farming is mainly subsistence monoculture with minimal use of chemical inputs and with characteristically low productivity. Livestock, small ruminants, and poultry are predominantly native. Bare horseback riding is the usual way of getting quickly from one place to another.

The Goducate team was in Lailara to discuss with the village chief and other leaders how we could best help the community. We agreed that the first priority is to teach the community how to grow and use Moringa to improve their nutrition and health. Moringa is a plant that provides many nutrients in its leaves, it seeds and its seedpods.

We hope to assign an agriculturally trained community development worker (CDW) to Lailara in the not-too-distant future. The village is excited about this prospect and has offered accommodation for this CDW. It also plans to identify one of the villagers who can be mentored on Moringa production, processing, and utilization.

Consultative meeting with the village leader

Site of proposed Goducate base in Lailara

2013-05-312013-06-03

Baa Baa Black Sheep at Goducate Training Center

In Jan last year we reported on the arrival of six white bundles at the Goducate Training Center (GTC) in Iloilo, Philippines. These were hair sheep donated by a friend from nearby Negros Island.

The sheep population at GTC has doubled since then. Recently we were stunned to see a newly-born black lamb amidst the all-white herd. We surmised that this has to do with the lamb’s parents both carrying a gene for color. It’s really not uncommon for black lambs to be born in a white herd to white parents. Different genes control the fleece color and pattern, whether it is solid or spotted. A black fleece comes from recessive genes, so when a white ram and a white ewe are each heterozygous for fleece color (having a recessive gene for black and a dominant gene for white), there is a 25% probability that their progeny could be a black lamb.

Since only a few white sheep are heterozygous for black, a black sheep is not common, the idiom “black sheep in the family” denotes a deviant or disreputable member of a group.

GTC is open to paying guests, and conducts educational tours of the premises for various groups. The children find petting, hand feeding, and hugging sheep to be adventurous and thrilling experiences. The black sheep will provide us with an opportunity to teach the older children and adult guests some basic genetics.

For booking inquiries, please contact GTC Iloilo at:
Tel 09225506199 Email gtc_iloilo@yahoo.com

2013-05-212013-05-23

Potential for food security at Goducate Children’s Home in Cambodia

I visited the Goducate Children’s Home in Cambodia again recently to see what new strategies could be applied to significantly improve food sufficiency for the children and staff at the Home. One of these focuses on rice production at two separate lowland parcels with an aggregate area of 0.8 hectare.

The past attempts in growing rice at the Home led to yields that were dismally low because of poor technology, low level of inputs, and inadequate crop-care activities. With an improved system of rice intensification, outputs can be expected to more than meet the daily staple need of all the residents at the Home for a year.

Hybrid rice is highly recommended because of its superior yield compared with that of inbred varieties. However, if it is not available in Cambodia, a local high-yield variety and preferably certified seeds should be used. Instead of the transplanting method of crop establishment, however, direct seeding should be practiced to save on labor requirements. This will also enable the adoption of an annual rice/rice/upland-crop pattern in the area—a pattern of growing an upland crop after two crops of rice, instead of letting the land lie fallow.

Another recommendation is the raising of Pangasius at one of the vacant fishponds. A riverine catfish found in the Mekong River, Pangasius is a fast-growing species that is excellent for fillet, soup, and broiling. It starts life as an omnivore, but after losing its teeth at 6 months it becomes mostly herbivorous. It can, therefore, thrive on kangkong (a semi-aquatic water plant also known as “water spinach”), sweet potato, and duckweed diets. Under ideal conditions, it can reach a length of 4 feet after 18 months. In Cambodia, the fingerlings can be sourced from fishponds in Phnom Penh.

Duck raising is one other option. A start-up involving 100 month-old ducks can supply the egg needs of Home, starting at 20 weeks of age (average of 285 eggs per bird per year). The excess eggs can be hatched into ducklings.

Other recommendations would be to expand the area planted with Moringa, a plant that can provide many nutrients; to plant sugar cane, because the juice is needed for fermenting animal feeds and brewing vermitea (a liquid fertilizer prepared from compost produced by earthworms); and the establishment of an orchard on the 0.75 hectare idle lot.

Apart from schoolwork, the children at the Home are already involved in agricultural and other livelihood projects, so although these options would widen the skills that they can acquire and increase food sufficiency, resource constraints would limit how the recommendations can be implemented. A step-by-step approach is the most realistic.

The 0.75-hectare idle lot with orchard-growing potential

One of the two lowland parcels suitable for rice growing