Our main mission for this time are bringing rice mill machine to the remaining Tagnen Village, and held a rice bank meeting gathering representatives from all the villages.
Departure from Battambang city at the early morning on 24th.
It was been hard raining continuously until just several days ago, and heard that some places got flood, so we’d worried about the road condition, but luckily we had a good weather from the morning we started and be able to move smoothly.
Since there are many members of Rice bank in Tagnen village, we asked our partner Mr. Sing Kea to find a bigger and elaborate rice mill for them.
They’re planning to put the machine in the enlarged barn of Mr. Wan Won’s home, the leader of rice bank, and he had already prepared the roof and materials for enlarging.
They didn’t have so much good harvest in these two years, and the last year’s harvest was about half of ordinary years. They didn’t have any rain fall until August for this year, then they have been late to grow the rice seedling, so they’re worried about harvest of this year too.
But anyway the rice mill is useful for them all, so they said that they’re going to share to use this machine.
About set up the machine, it is a bit complex structure, so they need to invite some specialist for fixing, and Mr. Sing Kea said that he will bring the man who have the technique of setting.
After that in 25th afternoon we started to go to Kompong Chnang with the members of Battambang, and got together with the members of Kompong Spoe on the way, to held the Rice bank meeting in Sreprey Village.
The participants are 3 members from Tagnen village and 2 from Preypreal village in Battambang, 3 from Sreprey villagein Kompong Chnang, and 2 members from Tropeanweng village, 1 from Snul village in Kompong Spoe, Mr. Sing Kea and 2members of CEP, so 14 people all together. It’s been two years since we held the whole members meeting last time, so we had a lively discussion about the topics.
1) About the condition of the rice mill in each villages
There are update and idea about the conditions and maintenance, also several issues of each rice mill. One of the machine is no problem, some of them are low power of the engine, or one of them seems the problem of transmission etc., and we discussed how to solve the issues.
As a conclusion they decided to do some improvement plan changing the engine of Sreprey’s, and the power source from ordinal electric to gasoline generator in Tropeanweng’s, and so on.
1) About the mutual method similar to the Micro saving system in Sreprey village
I heard about the mutual system in Sreprey, which use the capital of rice bank interest, I asked them to share how they start and manage it to the other members as a model case.
They said that some members returned the interest by cash not a rice seeds, and there were about $1,500 remain the capital of Bank of Buddha, so they started it with those budget from the beginning.
The members can borrow from it when they happened to need money for wedding or funeral of family members, or someone got sick or injured.
They borrow the money with 2% of interest, and the duration of loan is depends on each borrower from half year to 1year. There has been no case who haven’t pay back the money up to now.
The other members are getting interested in to this system, and said they also want to do in their villages. There are some paying the interest by cash in Tagnen and Snul Village, but other villages only by rice seeds, but they lend or donate the rice converted to the money depends on the necessity, so it is just a difference of rice or cash they said.
Anyway in order to set up and continue the system, it’s very important the management, so we discussed how to build the system properly.
For the conclusion Tagnen village will set up as a pilot for the first, and they’re going to open the bank account for it. The procedure is going to do by Mr. Kea.
The interest is high above 6%, so they can get good profit when they make a deposit in their account even the small amount, so it looks promising. I hope they can choose the proper member and manage it well.
2) About vegetable cultivation
We’ve given the vegetable seeds and asked the villagers to grow them as a home garden, but it seems not good going with out Sreprey village, so Mr. Kea explain again about the meaning and purpose of home garden.
① We can get safety food. ② We don’t need to spend money for buying the vegetables, so they can save money. ③ We can up the motivation ourselves when we realize the pleasure of harvest.
Moreover about the issues of soil and water, we can find a way to improve the condition. We don’t need to spend so much money to put cow dung and rice husk, shell or ash into the soil, also not so much water for growing if we stock one or two big pot of rain water.
We can grow several kinds of vegetables even in a small space through the year if we grow such like one kind of vegetable in one line and another kind in another line.
Then the villagers begin to be interested in it, and said that they would try in their each home.
Thus finished rather hurry but active discussion, we conclude the meeting and took lunch together. And after that we looked the vegetable field and duck feeding place in Sreprey village.
It was amazing that there are large vegetable field growing cucumber and morning glory, and moreover they have built a big duck keeping place feeding about 2,500 ducks, I was really surprised that they have made a big water poor with solar panel by themselves.
Usually they take 1,500 to 2,000 eggs per day, and sell them in the market at a price $1 for 10g, so when they sell 1kg eggs they get $100 sales per one day, it’s very good business!
The other village members seemed to be encouraged with this story, and I hope they would understand they can do it too if they work hard.
I was really glad that we have got a nice experience to see it.
