ျမန္မာ ျပည္သူသို ့ရိကၡာ စားပင္သစ္ စိုက္ပ်ိဳးေနေသာ အာဇာနည္တစ္္ဦး

Penn State horticulture professor Ricky Bates travels to cyclone-ravaged Myanmar with promising new crop
Agriculture in action.$20,000 in local donations aid country
By Gail Franklin- For the CDT

Local residents helped fill rice bowls at the dinner tables of 11 orphanages in Myanmar after deadly Cyclone Nargis hit the country May 2. Tuesday, Jul. 15, 2008
CDT photo/Christopher Weddle

Ricky Bates shows a few of the moringa trees he has grown at the Penn State greenhouses on Monday. The horticulture professor has taken the nutritious tree to Myanmar to help the country with its food shortages.

Donations from local residents totaling more than $20,000 were collected in the weeks after the storm at Calvary Baptist Church in State College and the Lifetime Orphaned Children’s Ministries in Lemont. The money was used to buy food at a time when the price of rice, a staple of the Burmese diet, has at least doubled.

The government of Myanmar, also known as Burma, estimates that 138,000 were killed in the storm that also wrecked the Irrawaddy Delta region where about half the country’s rice is harvested.

“One of the main implications of the storm is its impact on rice production and the impact it’s going to have over the next 12 to 18 months,” said Ricky Bates, who visited the country for two weeks in June. “It’s going to make life difficult not just for orphanages or rural people. Everyone has a difficult road ahead.”

Bates, an associate horticulture professor at Penn State, has made four trips to Myanmar in the past three years, both as a member of Calvary Baptist and a volunteer with the Lemont ministry and for agricultural development work.

He had already scheduled a visit for early June to observe farmer training in the Irrawaddy region, among other agricultural tasks. When the storm hit he knew that wasn’t going to happen, but he was able to visit orphanages north of the storm, where he has been an adviser on some farms and growing fields.

AdvertisementThe effect the cyclone has had on food production has made his work and research there even more important.

He said he found cause for hope when he saw a rice paddy that was purchased in January by one orphanage through donations by Calvary and the Lemont ministry. Bates said the paddy was not affected by the storm and will be ready for harvest in three to four months. “Clearly, they’re in a position now

where they can provide for some of their needs,” he said. “So that’s all very encouraging in the face of devastation.”

As a foreigner, he was not allowed to visit the hardest-hit areas, including the Irrawaddy region, but he listened and talked with Burmese people and aid workers who went to those regions. He said teams were sent from the orphanages to visit the affected areas of their country to deliver aid and, although it was weeks after the storm, they stayed to help bury bodies.

“From my time in Yangon (the capital) I know a lot of people were still in a state of shock,” Bates said. “People are still dazed by the death toll and the amount of devastation.”

Bates said he saw home-movie footage of the disaster that showed whole villages wiped out by the cyclone.

Larry Snyder, founder of Lifetime Orphaned Children’s Ministries, said orphanage directors have been handing out rice to people in their villages who have nothing to eat or can’t afford the skyrocketing price of food. They have also been able to feed the hundreds of orphans under their roofs.

As a horticulturist, Bates said the storm has shown what can happen when a society relies heavily on one crop. That’s why he spent much of his time last month working to introduce a nutritious plant called moringa to the orphanage farms.

“It’s really one of these God-given plants,” he said.

The subtropical plant’s leaves provide amino acids, four times the calcium of milk, three times the potassium of a banana, and other nutrition. It grows well in Myanmar, Bates said, and can grow into a tree to provide seeds for future plantings.

While it’s readily used in the food of the Philippines and Africa, it’s not a part of Burmese culture, he said.

Bates had already introduced moringa to a couple of orphanages on previous visits, and used his June trip to assess whether they were still growing it and to see if they would use it in their food.

“In Myanmar, it takes an effort to get them to understand the nutritional value and use it in recipes,” he said. “At one orphanage they served me soup using moringa.”

Bates said it was a rewarding moment to see his agricultural advice in action, making the lives of other people healthier. He plans to continue to introduce different plants and more efficient methods for growing rice, and teach children at the orphanages who are interested in working as farmers.

He emphasized that his work with the orphanages through his church is separate from his agricultural work, but he has found the orphanages to be a perfect farming training ground.

“The orphanage directors act as natural liaisons with the community, almost like our cooperative extension program,” he said. “They’re in a good position to take this technology and transfer it to other farmers in the community.”

A 31/ 2-acre plot of ground was purchased near the new 13-

acre rice paddy at one orphanage, and Bates dreams of turning it into a farmer training center with a library and a place for children who become too old to be cared for by the orphanage to learn to support themselves and their future families.

“They’ll start working in their communities and be centers of information for moringa and new ways of growing rice,” Bates said. “These small orphanages can become agents of change within their communities.”

“That’s the goal,” he added. “For these benefits to extend well beyond these individual orphanages.”
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