Empowered to become a Champion Farmer and Family Advocate through the Better & Enhanced Agriculture for Nutrition Project (BEAN)

“I had an experience once when I brought my sweet potatoes to sell at the Balimo market, but people wanted to buy the whole bag and resell. So, I sold the bag and went back home. This saved time to travel back home, and I had income”, says Alphie.

Alphie, from Kotale village along the Aramia river, is no stranger to farming yam and cassava apart from cash crops like vanilla and cocoa but his harvests were not as abundant as he wanted them to be due to various factors such as weather and a lack of skills and knowledge on farming.

“Without the proper knowledge of agriculture, I did not come across good harvest”, he adds.

However, we intervened in 2022 through the Better and Enhanced Agriculture for Nutrition (BEAN) Project, and with technical support from the Government of PNG through the National Agriculture Research Institute (NARI), a climate-smart agriculture (CSA) workshop was conducted where Alphie and other identified lead farmers attended.

“Right now, as I am doing what I was taught, I am harvesting enough to keep for my family, and some I sell’, says Alphie.

That workshop taught Alphie vital farming and garden management skills that would benefit his family and his community.

“I learned about food and nutrition, food security, nutrition security; I also learned about the size garden, types of plots, drainage and to put up barriers in my garden to avoid soil nutrients being washed away by heavy rain”, he says.

The skills and knowledge attained by Alphie through the workshop are vital in improving his garden and he emphasised the importance of, the “size of the garden”.

In the context of climate-smart agriculture, the "size of the garden", generally involves understanding and adjusting the dimensions of farming plots to maximise efficiency, sustainability, and resilience to climate change.

Equipped with such knowledge and skills, Alphie is now able to be resilient against unpredictable Delta Fly weather patterns, where the wet seasons begin around late May and continue through most of June and early July; thus, it brings various challenges with it, such as floods and rising water levels that can affect gardens and the growth of food.

Alphie’s village, Kotale is one of the 11 communities where the BEAN project is implemented. Travel is done by dinghies and dug-out canoes, which might take several hours depending on the type of boat. The journey from Kotale to Balimo could take an estimated 4 to 8 hours or more, depending on the weather.

Apart from being a lead farmer in his Kotale community with 10 contact farmers who receive seedlings from his nursery and learn from him based on his climate-smart agriculture training, Alphie is also a Village Health Assistant (VHA).

Alphie’s role as a VHA in his community is to identify malnourished children from ages zero to five, advise the child’s parents on nutrition and healthy feeding practices, referral of severely malnourished children to the nearest clinic for treatment apart from conducting regular awareness in his community on the importance of nutrition in a child’s development.

“I was trained as a Village Health Assistant to do awareness on nutrition and to train mothers through demonstrations on how to feed babies’, he says.

Through his VHA training, Alphie realised that nutrition is essential for the development and growth of children.

He makes sure that pregnant and breastfeeding mothers know the importance of breastfeeding through the infant young and child feeding sessions which include exclusive breastfeeding and complementary feeding awareness in his community.

“For breastfeeding mothers, I encourage them to eat fruits and vegetables because garden food is rich in nutrients”, adds Alphie.

As one of 85 Lead farmers that the project works with, Alphie advocates for increased farming activities to his community members because this aligns perfectly well with his role as a VHA and the project goal.

“I encourage them (community members) to do more gardening so they can harvest food from their garden and prepare balanced meals for their families”, he says.

Alphie also counsels breastfeeding and pregnant mothers on the proper ways of breastfeeding. He encourages them to eat from the 4 food groups connecting them to the six classes of nutrients required for the body to function and maintain overall health.

The four food groups comprise fruits and vegetables. grains, protein, and dairy. The nutrition component of the project emphasises a 40 percent intake of rice and garden food, 35 percent intake of fruits and vegetables, 20 percent intake of fish, meat, and eggs, and 5 percent of fat, oil, and sugary foods.

Alphie says that before our intervention, the Balimo market had sweet potatoes the size of a human adult’s hallux (big toe) but in recent times, this has changed as farmers are now selling bags of sweet potatoes similar to the size of a notebook – which is estimated at around 8 inches.

Recently Alphie sold a bag of sweet potatoes from his garden and bought 3 fishing nets, the Aramia River is known for its richness in freshwater fish – their length is the size of a human arm and an abundance of prawns.

“I bought 3 nets and now I use the nets to catch fish and sell it at the market, the income goes toward my Savings for Nutrition (S4N) group”, he says.

The BEAN project is also encouraging farmers to save the income they receive from their various project activities and to inspire a culture of saving money through the S4N groups.

Alphie is a member of the Kotale S4N group, the group has 21 members and after 2 S4N meetings, they now have around K600 in savings, well ahead of most other groups.

The BEAN Project is a 5-year project that aims to benefit an estimated 12, 000 people comprising of 3000 men, 3000 women, 3000 boys, and 3000 girls, these target numbers include persons living with disabilities.

As we continue to work closely with our valued partners in Delta Fly for the benefit of the most vulnerable children, we would not have been able to reach farmers like Alphie without the much–needed funding support of the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).