Two Lincoln PhD students are working closely with over 1000 farmers who are over 16,000 kilometres away, to help them out of poverty.
Randel Esnard and Jared Berends are part of the Myanmar Rural Income and Livelihoods Development Project and travel frequently to the South East Asian country.
They talk to farmers and help them identify agrifood chains, specifically in pig rearing and rice production, that can increase their incomes. Then they set up structures to implement them.
Both have backgrounds that lend themselves to the project, which started in 2017 in partnership with World Vision, and runs for five years.
Randel, from St Lucia, attended Lincoln in 2014-2016 on a NZ Aid Scholarship, a Government-sponsored programme for students from developing countries.
He came to Lincoln to do his Master’s degree in Commerce (Agriculture). Upon completion, he returned to his home country to resume his work with the Department of Agriculture. Two years later, he returned to Lincoln to pursue his doctorate in Agribusiness and International Rural Development.
Jared completed his Master’s at Lincoln in 2009 and went on to become World Vision’s Senior Director of Operations in Bangladesh before returning to Lincoln last year to study for his doctorate. He has also been Programme Quality Director for World Vision in Myanmar.
Each student has a different role in the project. Jared is working to develop models to identify the most effective value chain interventions, while Randel designs and establishes producer organisations to engage farmers to achieve these interventions.
In Jared’s first field visit, the pigs and paddy (rice) value chains were mapped out through participatory group workshops with value chain actors and technical experts.
Through the workshops, they found that only 30% of pigs in the market were produced locally and the farmers had limited influence on the price of live pigs. High farmer debt levels also limited farm expansion and placed pressure on farmers to sell at reduced prices.
“The paddy value chain is a high debt system and 40-60% of paddy production is sold immediately post-harvest in order to pay off term loans or informal loans from money lenders,” Jared said.
In both areas, the farmers were at a disadvantage and needed to work together, Randel said.
The system dynamic modelling technique used in the project is highly participatory and brought together people from across the value chains including local producers, brokers, paddy millers, butchers, wholesalers and retailers, some interacting for the first time.
They also reached new understandings of why prices varied so greatly from month to month, initially blaming each other rather than the feedback and relationships in the system.
Randel’s first field visit to Myanmar in January-March 2019 was to conduct an audit of the producer groups formed by World Vision Myanmar – Lincoln’s in-country partner in the project – and to meet with potential strategic partners in Yangon and the project target townships of Myeik and Palaw.
The findings revealed that the groups were very informal and had no stated objectives.
“We had to look at the challenges they faced and collectively have them identify potential solutions,” he said. These solutions formed the genesis of their group’s objectives.
In May, Randel returned to Myanmar and equipped 32 producer groups with innovative constitutions, which allow them to upgrade into fully-fledged businesses to support value-adding interventions with strategic partners. These constitutions comply with Myanmar cooperative law.
The research component of the project is already in action.
Forty farmers are now growing improved paddy seed crops under contract to their producer groups. Some groups have already placed bulk orders for fertiliser and animal feed. Others are in the process of negotiating contracts to sell the produce to premium buyers.
Jared is back in Myanmar now, and Randel will be following his trip up in January 2020, as the pair bring together their varied experiences to form a productive team creating meaningful change in farmers’ lives.