On the occasion of the campaign titled "16 days of Global Action on Land and Natural Resources" held from 01 – 16 October 2016 with the appeal for "Defend food sovereignty! Strengthen community resilience amid climate crisis!", the Centre for Sustainable Rural Development (SRD), beyond the scope of the "Rainforest recovery by local species nursery garden development" project, and in collaboration with Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PANAP), conducted a communication campaign with the theme "Ecological agriculture towards forest management and protection" in On Luong, Yen Lac, and Dong Dat communes from 11 – 13 October 2016.
The communication campaign created a dialogue forum for over 300 participants, including: representatives from government departments and local authorities, members of women's and farmer's associations, forest planting households and local residents to discuss the issue of pesticide and chemical fertilizers usage in agriculture production in Phu Luong district. It was also a good opportunity for all participants to get access to diversified information about eco-agriculture models for forest based households implemented by SRD at project areas of the district since 2013.
At the end of the workshop, representative leaders from 03 project communes and farmers from other non-project villages agreed for the registration of extended members to participate in groups of raising chickens with red worms, cultivating sticky rice named Vai following SRI method, growing clean herbal plants following Good Agricultural and Collection Practices WHO (GACP WHO standard) and growing Erythropalum scandens (a traditional forest vegetable) with red-worms humus with the aim of establishing the connection to the clean production companies in Hanoi and surrounding provinces. Especially, SRD will continue to support the households who raising honey bees by improving the quality of bees' resources and their products; thereby, promoting the brand of natural honey in forest based communes.
As the following-up activity after the event, SRD will implement a tool of Community based Pesticide Action Monitoring (CPAM) for key farmers in groups of safe and organic agricultural production, enabling them to apply the tool into the practice of products' cultivation and the supervision of products' quality. SRD expects that such products will help to bring stable incomes for farmers, and from that, motivating them to recover rainforest with local native species for environmental and ecosystem protection.
Centre for Sustainable Rural Development (SRD)
No.31, Alley 19 Kim Dong Street, Hoang Mai District, Ha Noi
Phone: +84 24 3943 6676/78 | Fax: +84 24 3943 6449
