Post by ShivaTD on Oct 16, 2013 10:17:01 GMT
Vietnam is succeeding today in implementing changes that are both good for the environment as well as being good for the people.
Vietnam remains a highly agrarian society with a very hard working population and it is stories like this that the United States needs to learn from. While we, Americans, are generally arrogant believing that "we know it all" it is this type of enterprise that we should be learning from. There is little if any waste from this type of combined use of the land which is highly productive producing crops as well as meat based food products (e.g. fish and hogs in this case) as opposed to depending upon Monsanto to fulfill our nutritional needs with genetically modified high yield crops and petroleum based chemical fertilizers.
Just think of how much further ahead Vietnam would be today if the US had not intervened to prevent a popular vote on the re-unification of Vietnam in the 1950's and hadn't been responsible for the Vietnam War that resulted in the deaths of millions of Vietnamese.
In Vietnam, the government is seriously throwing the whole give a man a fish/teach a man to fish thing on its proverbial head. Instead of handouts or casting lessons, rural farmers are encouraged to adopt what’s known as V-A-C approach, an ingenious integrated agriculture system built around raising pigs and fish and growing fruits and vegetables.
As the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations shows in this video, the system excels at feeding one area of the farm off of the byproduct of another. Nitrogen-rich silt from the fishpond is used to fertilize the vegetables and orchards; aquatic plants can be grown for feed; biogas captured from the hog pens is used as fuel in the family’s kitchen. It’s a closed loop, with little to no waste, and no chemical inputs.
Small-scale, integrated farming operations where championed by Ho Chi Min in North Vietnam in the late 1960s as way to improve nutrition in rural areas. The move away from collective farming models favored in the USSR led to the development of the V-A-C approach that’s practiced today, which started in earnest in the 1980s. Today, having shed much of its Communist baggage, the system is helping not only feed rural families, but is generating them profits in Vietnam’s increasingly open economy.
news.yahoo.com/no-waste-fish-hog-vegetable-fruit-farm-genius-004707985.html
As the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations shows in this video, the system excels at feeding one area of the farm off of the byproduct of another. Nitrogen-rich silt from the fishpond is used to fertilize the vegetables and orchards; aquatic plants can be grown for feed; biogas captured from the hog pens is used as fuel in the family’s kitchen. It’s a closed loop, with little to no waste, and no chemical inputs.
Small-scale, integrated farming operations where championed by Ho Chi Min in North Vietnam in the late 1960s as way to improve nutrition in rural areas. The move away from collective farming models favored in the USSR led to the development of the V-A-C approach that’s practiced today, which started in earnest in the 1980s. Today, having shed much of its Communist baggage, the system is helping not only feed rural families, but is generating them profits in Vietnam’s increasingly open economy.
news.yahoo.com/no-waste-fish-hog-vegetable-fruit-farm-genius-004707985.html
Vietnam remains a highly agrarian society with a very hard working population and it is stories like this that the United States needs to learn from. While we, Americans, are generally arrogant believing that "we know it all" it is this type of enterprise that we should be learning from. There is little if any waste from this type of combined use of the land which is highly productive producing crops as well as meat based food products (e.g. fish and hogs in this case) as opposed to depending upon Monsanto to fulfill our nutritional needs with genetically modified high yield crops and petroleum based chemical fertilizers.
Just think of how much further ahead Vietnam would be today if the US had not intervened to prevent a popular vote on the re-unification of Vietnam in the 1950's and hadn't been responsible for the Vietnam War that resulted in the deaths of millions of Vietnamese.