Help Environmental Farming in Myanmar

In late September Global Community Service Foundation’s(GCSF) project
manager in Myanmar (formerly Burma), spent two (2) weeks in Virginia at the
GCSF Headquarters. She was here to attend the GCSF 20th anniversary
celebration, to meet some of our donors and to work with, review and update our
projects in Inle Lake. The projects were reviewed by the U.S. staff, President of
the organization and members of the Board of Directors.
On the vermiculture program she confirmed that it was progressing slowly. She
did confirm that a few of the families have had marked success using the worm
casing liquid to fertilize their gardens instead of using toxic chemical fertilizer. The
the worm fertilizer is more economical than the chemicals, because the liquid
worm fertilizer can be produced at home using food scraps to feed the worms;
thereby creating nutritious plant growth enhancement.
We have faced some impediments in our goal of spreading the production and
use of the vermiculure fertilizer to more families. Reasons include:
1. Some of the producers of the casing liquid diluted the resulting fertilizer
with too much water and not enough casing. To correct the situation, we
will provide more instruction, and illustrate the difference in crop quality
when the proper ratio of water/casing is utilized.
2. Some family’s attempts to create vermiculute fertilizer failed because the
worms were not provided with a suitable habitat. Again, that shortcoming
can be remedied by more frequent instruction, and assistance, until the
families become more proficient with the care and feeding of the worms.
3. Because the family homes are built directly of on the lake, communication
between families is sometimes limited by the distances between them;
therefore the explanations of proper vermiculture techniques between the
villagers is sometimes not frequent or effective. Until now we have relied
on GCSF in-country representative and part-time volunteers to provide the
instruction and assistance which is necessary when such culture change,
and agricultural change, is implemented. Based on available funding, we
plan to hire a designated employ as the educator/facilitator/coordinator
and quality control monitor to introduce the correct vermicultute technique to additional families on the lake and to assist those who need more help with the process and procedures. We believe we now have the
resources to accomplish this.We believe that a full-time vermiculture advocate will help with many of the
situations listed above.
We believe, and the earlier results have shown, that the program can have an
immediate and progressive effect on the food production, nutritional quality
of food and will improve the quality of the water in the lake – to the villages
the lake is their world, to preserve it is to enhance the quality of life for
generations to come.
Speaking for the villagers, who have been successful with the technique, and
for the generations to come who will benefit from the cleaner water and
better crops, we thank our donors. We hope our donors will take pride in the
fact that the lake and people of Inle will be healthy and the lake
environmentally improved. We hope that you can point to Inle Lake and
proudly say, “I helped save a lake and improve the life of those who cling to the
only resource they have!”