Daw Than Nwes’s harvesting success

Daw Than Nwes’s harvesting success

Daw Than Nwe, a farmer from Myanmar, used VeggieTap to add a new crop to her farm. What started as an experiment became a great success. We thank our partner, East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer (EWS-KT), for recording and sharing Daw Than Nwe’s story.

Daw Than Nwe lives in the state of Rakhine, Myanmar. Together with her husband, the 45-year-old farmer mainly grows rice. Vegetables such as garden beans, cucumbers and bitter gourd bring in additional income.

She considered growing onions. This is a relatively new crop in her area and she was apprehensive about the outcome, but also eager to learn.

As she is one of the main farmers in the Transforming the Lives of Smallholder Vegetable Farmers for Income, Nutrition and Market Access in Rakhine project, she decided to take the opportunity to learn about effective onion cultivation.

The 2022-2024 project of East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer (EWS-KT), funded by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) under the Livelihoods and Food Security Fund (LIFT), focused on strengthening the capacity of smallholder farmers to build resilient livelihoods and food security, in conjunction with inclusive market development. It used a peer-learning approach in which the demonstration fields of key farmers were used as a hub for advising and training neighboring farmers.

These field activities were complemented using social media and digital learning tools such as EWS-KT’s GrowHow website and the VeggieTap app (powered by SkillEd). The app, which allows Daw Than Nwe and other farmers to access courses and farming information offline, has become an invaluable resource for her. “It was a very helpful tool to learn things like preparing vegetable patches and choosing plants,” says Daw Than Nwe.

To this day, the farmer uses VeggieTap to access information and guidance offline when she needs to know something.

Daw Than Nwe’s demonstration cultivation of onions was a great success.

“After 20 days, the onions sprouted and the yard turned into a carpet of green. I was very happy, and my neighbors came to my onion farm and asked many questions, such as ‘How did you do it?’ and ‘Where did you get the technique?’ I was very proud of myself.”

On her 688 square meter onion demonstration plot, Daw Than Nwe produced around 375 kilograms of onions. The market value at harvest time was around 220—US dollars – a return of 300 percent.

Daw Than New is confident that she can successfully grow onions in the coming years, and that neighboring farmers who are impressed with her harvest plan to follow her lead in growing this new crop.