Young Organic Farmer in Myanmar

June – August 2021

A young organic farmer from Myanmar shared the vision and experiences of organic farming practice with the other young organic farmers to reached out and build a future collaboration.

“…Pyae Phyo Aung is originally from Kyauk Kung Kwin Village, Gwa township, Southern Arakan State, Myanmar. He is implementing a farm named Training, Educating and Consulting Center (TECC) that was supported by NEED Myanmar (Network for Environment and Economic Development). In his area most of the farmers use the farmland as only for rice plantation in the raining season, they usually abandon their land as empty for the rest of year. He wanted to prove that the farmland is not only for rice plantation but also generate sufficient income for the family survival by growing seasonally crops and integrated with animals livestocks. In 2018 and 2019, he slowly made improvement of infrastructure and grew seasonal crops, long term fruit tree and banana. In 2020, he expanded a duck breeding activity with the total of 500 ducks. Moreover, other activities such as seasonal crop plantation, chicken breeding, rice plantation are also generating a large proportion of total income but also providing the fresh organic food to his communities with locally affordable price. He has been earning income between 25,000-35,000 MMK per day.

Since the beginning of the farm settlement in 2018, he has been contributing organic foods and products to local consumers and sharing technique of mushroom plantation, making organic composts, making fish amino liquids. In 2021, he can now settle at the farm with family and working hard and trying to create more locally adoptable agricultural activities to reach his dream plan. He is dreaming one day his farm will be a place where local people, visitors and learners can visit and learn his new ideas techniques about organic agriculture…”