One estimates that 90% Vietnamese farmers use up to 50% too much chemicals. Often at the wrong time and without the proper proportions and doses. There are many cases of poisoning. The farmer himself is also a victim: he goes out spraying barefoot and with no mask, using products which are sometimes forbidden elsewhere.
There has been no human victim in the regions where we operate, but animals died in numbers in the Mekong delta. In Vietnam the economic impact has been huge because the farmers were forbidden to carry their animals to large markets and as raising birds had become non profitable, they had to stop feeding them.
In remote villages up to 30-40% animals die from various diseases and are sold in a hurry with a heavy discount. This is an enormous loss for the farmer and also a serious risk for the customers.
If you raise pigs there are good chances you will have unhappy neighbors, not counting your family itself! Bad smells, flies and mosquitoes who spread dengue fever and malaria... Biogas is a solution: the pig dung is mixed with water and directed into a long plastic tube (1 m diameter, 7-10 meters long).
For a small farmer the priority is to reduce risks. When one has only a small piece of land, it is crucial to avoid failures, they cannot be compensated by other incomes. Proven traditional techniques look safer than innovations proposed by an agronomist from outside the village.
