HEIFER PROJECT IN LAOS
Mr. Niwatchai Suknaphasawat
Director, Mekong Region Program
P.O. Box 15
Chiang Mai 50000
THAILAND
Phone: 6653-300113
Fax: 6653-300114
hptnwc@loxinfo.co.th

HPI is a 56-year-old nonprofit organization that provides poor communities with livestock and related training to enable them to achieve self-reliance and a sustainable lifestyle.

Serious ecological and environmental degradation has been caused by population pressures, unsustainable shifting agriculture practices, and uncontrolled timbering. These problems are particularly acute in the Mekong River region and have adversely affected the ability of the people to survive. Over 60 villages have submitted requests for assistance in livestock restocking or improvement, animal management training, and veterinary assistance. To respond to these many requests, a team of veterinarians and livestock specialists from HPI country offices in Thailand, Viet Nam, China, and Cambodia, and partner organizations in Laos and Myanmar formed to develop a regional “borderless” approach to solving some of the problems faced by the families in the Mekong River region.

This program will enable about 3,600 families in these six countries over a five year period to improve their income; decrease malnutrition, especially in children; and reduce deforestation rates and begin reforestation.

As an approach to development that reaches across international boundaries, the program will specifically provide these families in participating villages with veterinary services, livestock, training in community planning, program development, and evaluation. It will also provide specific training in agricultural management, animal husbandry, integrated agriculture, food preservation, and opportunities to train and exchange with participating farmer groups in other areas and other countries.

HPI has worked in northern Laos since the late 1980s. The program provided training in para-veterinary skills for selected local village health care workers. HPI established veterinary service networks between grassroots groups and various levels of the government Livestock Development and Veterinary Services Department, in collaboration with Quaker Service Laos. In addition, project families received cattle.

In 1996, HPI worked with the Department of Livestock and Fisheries (DLF) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to start a cattle raising project in six target villages in the Tha Phabat District of Bolikhamsai Province and Pak Ngerm District of Vientiane Municipality. To date, 47 families have received 108 cattle. The cattle distributed to these families are offspring of 106 project cows distributed in previous project activities.

Each participant received training in animal husbandry and health care and two or three cattle. They agree to “pass on” the original cows along with the second offspring to new families in the village when the third offspring is weaned. Each family will keep two offspring from each of the project animals. Seventeen families have already passed on the gift to their neighbors.

Based on extensive experience with the same ethnic groups in Thailand, HPI is expanding its program in Laos into integrated agriculture with livestock, fish and crop production. This rural development approach has been very successful, not only in increasing the economic and nutritional status of participating families, but also in enhancing and improving the environment. Participating families plant trees and use sustainable agriculture practices, such as replacing (or reducing) chemical fertilizers with animal manure, feeding crop byproducts to livestock, and using terraced methods of planting crops and gardens.