Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
that these could all be considered as rational farmer choices, aimed at addressing
very immediate livelihood concerns, and in some cases alleviating direct household
food insecurity. These villager poverty-reduction decisions and investments were
not however in line with ITPP project directives for livelihood improvement.
As documented in the ADB's own macro-project reviews, there also were many
problems with plantation establishment in the case of Naa Pang Yai. The key
project inputs, healthy eucalypt seedlings, were in many cases not delivered until
July or later, which is the very peak period for labour intensity in the Lao agricul-
ture calendar. As a result, sometimes there was no time to actually plant the seed-
lings until September or even October, which marks the beginning of a six-month
dry season. The quality of the seedlings provided by the company
8
contracted by
the provincial forestry office was also reported to decline in the second year by vil-
lagers. Fencing materials could arrive even later than the seedlings, which meant
that some smallholder trees were trampled by grazing livestock after planting.
Not all of the implementation problems can be traced back to problems with
project disbursements. Many farmers in Naa Pang Yai actually suggested that one
of the reasons they felt that their eucalypt trees were performing poorly was that
village children tended to burn the scrub forest in the hot season, to flush out
rodents and other animals for food. Often, these fires would enter into a farmer's
eucalypt garden, causing damage to the trees. Such unruly livelihood practices are
only incorporated into the analytics of large, modernizing, donor funded projects
with great difficulty.
From interviews, and from fieldwork observations of how provincial project
officials interacted with villagers during my visits, the provincial extension service
was seriously inadequate to their task of facilitating farmer knowledge of tree grow-
ing. Many Naa Pang Yai farmers reported that I and my field assistant were the first
people to come to look at their plots. Villagers reported that PAFES extension
advice and management instructions were delivered through verbal seminars at
meetings, not through actual site visits and demonstrations.
Today, the results of the ITPP project in Naa Pang Yai village are clear to anyone
with even a passing knowledge of eucalyptus forestry. Despite the genuine efforts
of the villagers, all of the smallholder plots in Naa Pang Yai are complete financial
losses. After five or six years their trees have diameters of two to three centimeters,
with spindly, one to two meter trunks, diseased leaves and patchy crowns. In
extended interviews, not a single Naa Pang Yai farmer held accurate information
concerning what the market price of a ton of eucalyptus was, or what their options
were for selling any marketable trees. It was commonly thought that the Salavane
provincial forestry office, the APB or even the ADB might come to purchase their
eucalypt trees when they matured, which is most certainly not the case. Many vil-
lagers interviewed during the course of research were not yet aware, or perhaps did
8
Reported as DAFI,
Department of Agriculture and Forestry Industries
, a state-owned forest and
logging company based in Pakse.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search