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Sustainable Development of Peri-urban Agriculture
in South-East Asia Project |
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The frog business is hopping Farmers excited over new frog enterprise
Thai frog is a special type of frog introduced from Thailand that is easy-to-grow with minimal costs. The large, brown, bumpy-skinned frog has quickly emerged as an attractive enterprise for farmers. A training course on Thai frog production techniques was held on 9 June 2005 at the Office of Phuoc Vinh An Ward People’s Committee. Most of the 55 farmers who attended the training are currently raising livestock and poultry, but marketing problems created by bird flu and unstable prices have led many of these farmers to look for other enterprises to supplement their incomes. They liked what they heard at the training. After the course, 95% of the farmers said they had the capacity to raise frogs and 93% said they would start raising frogs in the near future. The remaining 7% of farmers were more hesitant, mostly because they lacked the capital needed to establish production facilities, which typically consist of concrete tanks. The major limitation now is frog seed, but the Experiment Station of the Faculty of Fisheries is working to make more seed available at an affordable price (1,000 VND/seed). Once this obstacle is overcome, you can expect to see many more farmers hopping into the frog production business.
Regional workshop on vegetable
Market Information and
From May 9 -13, 2005 a regional workshop on Market Information and Consultation System (MICS) was held in RIFAV (Hanoi) to disseminate methods for collecting, processing, disseminating market information suitable for decision-making of private and public stakeholders involved in vegetable marketing, based on Susper experience.
In the workshop, after the presentation on objectives, method and problems of MIS at international level by Dr. Paule Moustier, MICS of 3 participating countries were presented in turn. The Market Information System in Hanoi was displayed by 3 involved institutes: RIFAV for methodology, ICARD for data storage and dissemination on TV and website and DA for data dissemination to farmers in 4 Hanoi project sites. Two other presentations from Vietnam are “Method of fruits and vegetable market information systems in South Vietnam” by ICARD and “Fish market information systems in Ho Chi Minh city” by HCMC University of Agriculture and Forestry. MICS in Cambodia was put on view in 2 presentations: (i) the vegetable price market information service in the Agriculture Marketing Office (MAFF) and (ii) Basis of a vegetable MICS in Phnom Penh from Susper experience. From Laos, a presentation on Susper vegetable MICS was delivered by participants from the MOAF. All these presentations were followed by debates to make the uncertain points clearer. Thanks to this, participants could learn and exchange their experiences with colleagues from other countries.
Price statistical analysis by Dr. Ludovic Temple from CIRAD and the AgriMarket software introduced by Mrs. Chan Sipana (MAFF) were highly appreciated by participants, especially the statistical analysis. Apart from workgroups for self-practice in the workshop, they expressed that they found this software and analysis very useful and would spend more time practicing and put into use in their work. Also participants to the workshop had a night market visit in Hanoi to discuss with contact traders and control of price information in working group by comparing their collected prices with data collected by RIFAV via telephone on the same day.
Report on the workshop will be soon available.
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Last update: 06/06/2006 02:46:53 PM +0700
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