Project Detail

Pesticide Free Rice Project Through IPM/FFS in Ezbaran Village, Caspian Region

Project location:Fereydounkenar Mazandaran(Lat/Long:36.690153-52.513275)
1-Expansion of IPM/FFS and production clean products to Ezbaran site based on Souteh Pilot on agro-ecosystem management through IPM/FFS and participation of Damghahdaran Cooperation (linked to the UNEP GEF SCWP after mid term review on livelihoods)

2-Marketing of the products and local quality control and some type of local certification

3-Reduction of pesticides and comparison of before and after in selected site

4-Documentation

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Project Snapshot

Grantee:

Cooperative of Ezbaran Damgahdaran

Country:

Iran

Area Of Work:

Chemicals

Operational Phase:

Phase 3

Grant Amount:

US$ 15,000.00

Co-Financing Cash:

US$ 10,000.00

Co-Financing in-Kind:

US$ 18,000.00

Project Number:

IRA-06-06 (73rd)

Start Date:

12/2006

End Date:

8/2009

Status:

Satisfactorily Completed

Photo Gallery

Pictures of financial workshop at ezbaran on 26 Jun 07

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Project Characteristics and Results

Notable Community Participation

Community members (local farmers of Ezbaran Village) were already gathered for UNEP Siberian Crane Project. SGP office invited them to attend in participatory project planning workshop for another SGP project (Safaroud) as guests to be introduced to participatory project planning concepts. Since they found the workshop helpful, 15 of local farmers asked SGP office to hold similar workshop in Ezbaran village to find if they can propose a project. Afterwards upon approval of their proposal for IPM/FFS project for their rice farms, all project activities including holding Farm Field Scholl training sessions, information sharing sessions (where farmers from neighboring villages sometimes participated), preparing financial and progress reports, marketing activities for IPM products were all done by local community members using the help and support of facilitators. Community members were so fascinated that made a lot of contribution to project. Here are some examples: a) Mr. Mahdi Dokht, owner of a local brick making workshop, proposed to provide electricity needed for water pump for the sample farm. b) Mr. Homayouni, a local farmer, contributed a farm of 3000 square meters to cultivate IPM rice. c) Mr. Moghadam, a local farmer, contributed a farm of 1500 meters to be cultivated in rice and duck method. d) Dr. Alizadeh, the local veterinarian, contributed by visiting farm ducks free of charge. Although the project is completed now, community members are still cooperating with each other as well as other communities working in IPM theme in other villages and developing new marketing activities together with other teams including exhibitions and markets in different cities.

Promoting Public Awareness of Global Environment

During the project, many different training on specific issues regarding rice farms as well as general environment issues have been given in participatory workshops which were held twice in a month. Some farmers from neighboring village attended in workshops time to time. As a result of these trainings, local farmers found out about 80% of pesticides they use are effect less and were more cautious using chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Tests carried out by eligible laboratories to examine remaining of chemicals in the rice from farms, show there were no sign of chemicals used in the farms. This is the guarantee that farmers believe in this method and fully aware of its benefits.

Capacity - Building Component

Many weekly participatory workshops have been held in farms where farmers and facilitators participated and focused on the following topics: - Disinfecting nurseries and seeds - Disposing infected plants remaining - Using Organic fertilizers - Eliminating weeds - Paying attention to former cultivation method (???? ?????) - Paying Attention to formerly chemicals used in the farm Proceeding to two cultivation seasons, local farmers were trained enough to train other farmers in neighboring areas on the same topics. This part of training was called training of trainers (TOT).

Emphasis on Sustainable Livelihoods

One of the critical problems of farmers in the area was high production costs are rice specially the costs of chemical pesticides and fertilizers which decreased the benefits for farmers. According to the data farmers provided in the project, two major pesticides are used in conventional rice farms; first group includes pesticides which are used against ???? ???? ????? and ???? ?? ???? ??? and ??????? and average amount is 4-5 liters in 3 times for each hectare during the cultivation period. Second group includes pesticides which are applied against ??????? ???? and the amount is 4-7 liters in 3 times for each hectare. Based on calculations done by local farmers, in conventional method, the cost of production for the sample farm was $560 and the income was $1200 ($640 net profit for each cultivation period). However, results showed that using IPM method the cost would be $838 for the same size farm and income would increase to $2027 including sales of ducks, ?????? , ???? ????? and rice ($1189 net profit for each cultivation period). Figures indicate that although farmers need to spend more costs in IPM method ($278), they earned 70% percent more than conventional method ($838) which is almost 50% increase in the net profit. As the test results done by eligible parties show no sign of chemicals used in project sites in the seasons after project completion, we may conclude increase in farmers? income as well as their awareness of environmental damages of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, guarantee the project practices sustainability.

Gender Focus

Women, especially youngers, were actively involved in the project and notably had a contribution in preparing project reports and documentations. (I don?t know if they had any other role for example in the marketing policies)

Project Results

- Project Sustainability:

Farmers of this project together with some other IPM projects (supported by FAO, GEF/SGP and Ministry of Agricultural Jihad extension office) made a network and set up a cooperative to share related information and sell their products in markets throughout the country. This self-organized network now runs efficiently and its members regularly update each other with news and markets. They represented their products in several festivals and market in many cities and recently they opened their permanent stall in one of grocery markets in Tehran. Cinergy of this gathering and using team potential to develop the market is the best motive to carry on project activities.

- Replication of Project Activities

A number of projects in this theme were running almost at the same time. An IPM cluster was formed not only including SGP supported projects but also other organizations notably FAO, Ministry of Agriculture, CEP and Department of Environment. Fortunately as a result of strong ties between supporting agencies, a network was developed and project team members had a number of knowledge sharing visits and workshops.
A significant and rather newly applied method in this theme, was farmer to farmer developing technique which seems to be quite effective (now many of famers who were trained in earlier projects, are training farmers of neighboring and sometimes villages far from their initial site).
What tends to be a very significant achievement of this project is cooperation of two different International Agencies in the project: on one side UNEP which was performing a project on protection of Siberian Cranes in the same area which agreed to contribute in part of project expenses and on the other side SGP which agreed to contribute the other part of project expenses as well as sharing the knowledge of former IPM/FFS projects.

- Policy Impact

Since a considerable number of projects supported by SGP, FAO, CEP, UNEP, and ministry of agriculture were executed during the recent years and a good network was formed between these projects and policy and decision makers, finally in 2008 the Organic Agriculture National Strategy Policy of Iran was approved.

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