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Newsletter November 2005
• A Newsletter is Born!
• Mega-Learning through Rural Micro-Business
• Teach a Man to Fish Farm – the
Benin School Making Money From Maggots
• Spreading the Word
• Send to a Friend
A
Newsletter is Born!
Welcome to the very first Teach
A
Man To Fish
e-bulletin!
We hope you’ll
be as excited as we’ve been to find out more about some
of the fascinating work being pioneered in agricultural schools
around the world.
As
our membership grows we aim to bring you fresh ideas and inspirational
stories from schools that are leading the way in finding new
techniques to finance vocational education through agricultural
production - and in doing so training the next generation
of rural entrepreneurs with the skills they need to succeed.
In this issue we travel from the heart
of South America – where school co-operatives are building
students’ start-up capital – to West Coast Africa
and a school that’s making money out of maggots!
Mega-learning through
rural Micro-business
If you are in Asunción, Paraguay and looking for fresh
organic produce—or simply a new culinary adventure—the
place to go is the “Agro-shopping” market on Tuesday
mornings. There, from dawn to dusk, you will find throngs
of shoppers wending their way among some 60 colourful stands
that sell everything from arugula to zapallo, a popular local
squash.
But amid the bustle of market day, you
will come upon one stand that is different from the rest.
This is the stand run by COOPTA, the cooperative established
and managed by the third-year students from the San Francisco
Agricultural High School in Cerrito, Paraguay, an initiative
of the Fundación
Paraguaya.
Every Tuesday, COOPTA’s youthful vendors
travel from their school in the Paraguayan Chaco to the capital
city of Asunción to sell a wide array of fresh products
from School’s organic farm. Meanwhile, part of the proceeds
from their sales is helping to support a new approach in agricultural
education: teaching the children of impoverished farmers how
to become efficient rural entrepreneurs.
What is
COOPTA?
COOPTA is part of an educational initiative launched by the
Fundación Paraguaya to teach young people the modern
business skills and values of cooperation and mutual assistance
needed to set up and operate a successful cooperative. The
initiative is based on the programs of Junior Achievement,
a volunteer organization that educates young people about
business, economics and entrepreneur-ship in some 110 countries
worldwide.
COOPTA has about 30 members, all students
in their final year at the Agricultural School in Cerrito.
At the beginning of the school year, each student joined the
cooperative by buying a few shares valued at about $3. By
the end of the year, when it comes time to graduate and leave
the cooperative, the students hope to be able to withdraw
savings of around $150 each — valuable seed capital
to kick-start their own businesses when they return to their
family farms. Meanwhile, part of the revenues from the sales
made by COOPTA helps cover some of the operating expenses
of the Agricultural School itself.
How does
COOPTA manage to meet all of these objectives?
Let there be no mistake; this educational exercise is also
serious business. To begin with, students learn to manage
the cooperative efficiently, according to modern business
practices. So far, they have developed three sources of revenue.
COOPTA markets products from the school’s organic farm
at the “Agro-shopping” market and at a roadside
store near the School, retaining ten percent of total revenues.
It also sells school supplies, snacks and personal items to
students on the school campus. Finally, it earns fees for
the agro-veterinary services - this year, for example, COOPTA
won a contract from Paraguay’s National Animal Health
Service to assist in the campaign to vaccinate the nation’s
cattle herd against hoof-and-mouth disease.
What do
the members of COOPTA hope to gain through all this hard work?
Their real aim is to build up working capital for their future
endeavors, while helping their school finance part of the
cost of their education. But thanks to their experience in
COOPTA, these new rural entrepreneurs will be setting off
in life with more than just cash in hand. They will also have
gained practical experience in managing an efficient rural
enterprise. At the same time, they will know first-hand how
much can be achieved, for themselves and their community,
with a very small amount of capital and a lot of hard work,
cooperation and good business management.
Teach A Man
To Fish-Farm – Benin School Making Money From Maggots!
It’s fair to say that the Beninese
love their fish. All of which means that despite the country’s
coastal location and numerous lakes, Benin continues to import
significant quantities of fish year after year.
This enormous potential for developing fish
farming has not gone unnoticed.
The Songhai
Centre, a local NGO which runs six agricultural schools
across Benin, has always made research and training in fish-farming
a priority. In order to develop a generation of fish farming
entrepreneurs Songhai has invested not only in improving techniques
but also in direct support to Benin’s fledgling fish
farming industry.
By encouraging each school to specialise
in a particular type of fish-farming Songhai aims to promote
the diversification of fish-farming practices:
At Songhai Kinwedji
young catfish and tilapia are fattened tanks yielding 200
kg per month.
Songhaï Parakou
raises fish in pens spanning an area of 40 hectares and permitting
a production capacity of around 1,000 kg per month.
Songhai Porto-Novo
breeds young fish for the other Songhai sites and for outside
sale. A modern hatching unit covers all stages from artificial
insemination of catfish, through incubation and the rearing
of fry (baby fish). It is also engaged in research related
to raising fish in drainable ponds.
As
well as training large numbers of students with specialist
skills in fish-farming, the schools’ fish-farming activities
provide a significant amount of income to support the Songhai
Centre’s activities. To give an idea of scale, the production
of catfish alone at the Porto-Novo site averages 3.8 metric
tons per annum. As well as Tilapia, hundreds of thousands
of immature fish are also sold annually.
Where Songhai is really adding value to
the development of fish-farming in Benin however lies in finding
new ways to make use of resources available locally. With
fish feed accounts for over 60% of the cost of production
reducing its cost provides a good example. For over a decade
Songhai has been refining the use of maggots as feed. The
unit within Songhai producing maggots also illustrates the
benefits of Songhai’s integrated approach to farming.
This is because the production of maggots comes from the recycling
of by-products from the abattoir and from the processing of
fruit and malt. The decomposition of these by-products yields
over 500 kg of maggots per day - enough to provide more than
75% of the feed, and ensure an increase in growth of the fish
by around 2 tonnes per month.
Similarly when it comes to
the feeding of fry (baby fish) Songhai has pioneered the production
of granules based on manioc flour. This process not only uses
a product, manioc that is abundant locally, but also reduces
the waste that occurs when fish food dissolves or decomposes
in water. Songhai’s granules have not only led to an
overall improvement in the use of fish food with cost savings
of up to 45%, but better still the machine, which it developed
to produce granules, is itself being marketed in Benin –
and even exported!
It’s fair to say that when it comes
to ‘teaching a man to fish’ the Songhai Centre
really has taken the concept to a whole new level!
Spreading the
Word
Keeping you informed of developments in
this arena, and providing a quality service to our members,
requires a constant need to expand our network.
We need to find schools already funding
elements their work through sale of school products, and those
that are prepared to experiment with this approach –
and we need your help to spread the word!
Although the internet has created unrivalled
possibilities for agricultural schools across developing countries
to share their experiences, finding these schools and putting
them in contact with each other is no simple task.
If you have any connections with agricultural
schools that might be interested in our network please make
sure you get
in touch!
Send to a Friend
Hopefully this newsletter has given a glimpse
of how schools can deliver an excellent education and generate
income to support their work.
If you know someone who you think might
be interested in our organisation, why not let them know about
us?
It couldn’t be easier –
just click
here!
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