Trainees learn hygienic food-processing skills. Pic: Daw Mya Mya Win

A ONE-YEAR project to teach food-processing skills to villagers throughout Myanmar with the aim of promoting rural development and alleviating poverty was completed last month, said an official involved in the project.

Daw Mya Mya Win, the national project director, said the Village-Level Processing Empowerment through Enterprise Skills Development project administered by Myanma Agriculture Service from July 2006 to July 2007 was part of a regional project conducted in Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.

“The regional project was supported by the Asia Development Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency and United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation,” she said.

“The project was aimed at enhancing rural development and poverty alleviation by teaching micro-enterprise skills in food processing,” she said.

Daw Mya Mya Win said the purpose of the project was to teach farmers food-processing skills so they would not lose unsold crops.

“When farmers grow more crops than the market demands they cannot sell the leftover crops as fresh produce, so we teach them how to preserve the food,” she said.

“Most food-production businesses are not very hygienic so we taught the villagers how to process the food using hygienic methods, and we also taught them how to market the products as well as basic accounting skills,” she said.

As part of the project, Myanma Agriculture Service provided hygienic food processing training to 26 people – including village entrepreneurs and related government staff – at the Central Agricultural Research and Training Centre (CARTC) in Hlegu in Yangon Division last December.

“We trained 26 people from Sagaing, Mandalay, Yangon and Ayeyarwady divisions and southern Shan State and we asked them each to train at least 10 people in their own regions,” Daw Mya Mya Win said. “After the training, I travelled with two national consultants to these regions to monitor their activities. We found that a total of 556 additional people had been trained, which exceeded our expectations.”

The trainees are now using the skills they learnt to produce sweet potato chips, mango preserves, mango pickles, sesame brittle, strawberry jam and other food products, she said.

“For example, one trainee named U Myint Aung from Leizin village in Sagaing Division was only involved in farming before the training but now he is producing tomato and mango preserves as well,” she said.

Daw Mya Mya Win said that to maintain the activities initiated by the project, Myanma Agriculture Service will offer food-processing courses twice a year at CARTC.

“If private businesses are interested and make a request, we can also offer special courses,” she said.

The first two courses have been scheduled for October and next February.