Background: The ADB TA 8163 Core Agriculture Support Program Phase II, has provided support to selected Ministries of Agriculture in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) within the ambit of the Working Group on Agriculture. Following the success of the first round pilot projects in 2014-2015 and an Assessement mission on lessons learned , a second round of of pilot projects were launched in late 2016 on Green Water Management (GWM) and on Nitogen Use Efficiency {NUE).
Mrs. Saysamone Ta-In is a farmer at Houaykapho village, Lakhonepheng district, Saravan province. She is one of the demonstration farmers of the GWM project in Lao PDR. Her main occupation is farming. She has 2 children: one daughter and one son. She cultivates organic vegetables under the GWM project. Every day, she has many visitors to her farm to buy her organic vegetables, the consumers learned this information from community radio that broadcasts daily by the local agriculture authority. In addition, her daughter who normally uses Facebook on a regular basis, has advertised her mother’s vegetable farm in the Facebook to reach more consumers. As a result, she can sell vegetables every day to earn income and she has now expanded her cultivation from one area to other vacant land within her farm. She said that her vegetables are not enough to sell to the consumers, that’s why she expanded her cultivation area.
The Green Water Management (GWM) project has taught her how to harvest rain water for organic vegetable farming, which in turn has helped to augment her income from increased crop production and ensure food safety at the farm level. Furthermore the creative use of social media, Facebook in particular, has assisted her to provide information to potential buyers in the vicinity.