The objective of this project is to utilize Japanese environmental technologies, such as the technique used for the disposal of livestock waste in southern Kyushu, to preserve and improve the environment in the valleys of southern Shan State, one of the poorest regions of Myanmar and home to the minority Shan people. It also seeks to contribute to the region's agricultural development through instruction in specially devised farming techniques and systems, such as the use of crossbred ducks in paddies to control insect pests and weeds and provide natural fertilizer.
This year six Japanese experts visited Myanmar to conduct training sessions for Shan farmers on the use of crossbred ducks in wet-rice farming and on farming systems that recycle and utilize resources more efficiently. Over the three years of the project farmers from six villages received training from Japanese experts. These efforts had tangible results, including a fivefold increase in potato yields. As a result, neighboring villages also began to eagerly await the experts' arrival.
Meanwhile, four trainees were sent to Japan to study the basics of the Japanese language, shiitake mushroom production, the cultivation of tuberous crops, and forestry. This brought the total of trainees sent to Japan over the three years of the project to eight (half farmers, half Ministry of Forestry officials). The four trainees from the first two years of the project are already playing leadership roles in Shan State, and the same is expected of this year's contingent.
Originally, this project was limited to support for sending Japanese agricultural experts to Myanmar and han agricultural trainees to Japan, but it was hoped that it would serve as a catalyst for a variety of related projects in a wide range of fields. Those that have already been implemented include the Japanese government's construction of an agricultural training center in Shan State, a United Nations project to promote the planting of alternate crops to the poppies used to make heroin, an independent Karamosia project to build an elementary school in Shan State, and Kyushu Electric Power Co. forestry and wind-power electricity generation projects. The agricultural training center in particular has provided a venue for training under this project, and thus represents an unusual blend of government and private-sector assistance.
The project has had other ripple effects, too, including ongoing interregional exchange, as illustrated by the establishment in 1999 of Small Myanmar, an NGO made up entirely of middle school students in Kyushu's Kagoshima Prefecture. This initiative owes a great deal to lectures by visiting trainees at local middle schools and to local media coverage of the project.