Bhutan

Salamjee Sustainable Farmland Management Project in Salamjee Village, in Dagana Dzongkhag

Salamjee is a small village with 18 households under Tshangkha Geog in Dagana (Dzongkhag) District .  It is one of the remotest and poorest villages in the Geog.  It is three hours walk from the nearest Wangdue-Tsirang highway via the mule track from Burichu.  The farmers were resettled from the neighbouring villages in early 1970s afte they received land Kidu from Government.  The forests were cleared and converted into agricultural land gradually. 

Problem:
Salamjee village is situated on the steep slope on the right bank of Puna-Tshangchu river.  The difficult terrain of the village is explained by the rapid variation of altitude from 400 m to 1000 m from lower to upper part of the village.  This provides tremendous challenge in sustaining livelihoods of the farmers.  According to the diagnostic study conducted by RC Bajo in 2005, the average slope of the fields in the village is estimated at around 70 percent.  Further, the fields are full of rocks and boulders occupying about 30 percent of the field on the average.  Although, average households land holding stands at 6.8 acres per household (RNR RC Bajo, 2005), the effective area actually utilized by the farmers in practice is much smaller.

The convention method of land preparation - clearing crop residue and ploughing increases the risk of soil erosion.  The net effect of farming in such situation is land degradation through loss of top soil ultimely reducing the farm productivity thereby undermining the sustainability of the rural livelihood system in the long run. 

Project Objective:
The long term objective of the project is to enhance the livelihood system of the Salamjee Farmers to ensure sustainable food production.  It is expected to be realized through rehabilitation and protection of the deteriorating farmland by not only enhancing the farmers' capacity to analysis the problem, identify and implement the solutions, but, also provide adequate empowerment manage their own resources for addressing their own priority issues.

Actual Project Outcome:
The immediate outcome of the project is as follows:

1. Contouring of the steep farmland had been completed;
2. Stone risers construction along the contours has been completed:
3. The multi-purpose tree species nursery had been established and the nursery started producing the tree saplings and grass slips to meet their local demands;
4. The 250 meters long diversion channel network had been constructed which diverts the storm water during the peak monsoon season;
5. The community have planted aroud 1 hectare of assorted valuable species and 120 acres of government reserved forest had been handed over to the community as community forest;
6. The community hall constructed in the middle of the village which serves as a multipurpose hall-meeting hall, gues house for visitors:
7. Unlike in the beginning of the project, now every household produces vegetables for self consumption and 12 of the 18 household sells the excess produce on the local market.
8. The top soil loss due to surface run-off from the field has been reduced since there are no scars of soil erosion such as rills and gulleys seen in the farmland;
9. The sustainable farmland management group have been formed and named as Salamjee Phashing Zingchoung Tshogpa (SPZT) which became the driving force to efficiently and effectively carry out the land management activities;
10. One of the visible impactis includes the change in the land form from steep degraded farmlands with gulleys and rills to terraced fields with stone risers and grass slips and fruit trees along the contours;
11. The total of 2736 numbers of citrus seedlings were planted by 18 households out of which 1969 numbers of plants were successfully grafted by the communities within 2 years of project time;
12. The farmers saving group have been formed the individual household contributes Nu. 200 half yearly and have made the saving amounting to approximately Nu. 30,000 which are aimed to maintain future sustainability of the land management activities;
13. The farmland management activities carried out by this community has been appreciated by the other dzongkhags and near by villages.  The same approach has been replicated by the communities of three other villages like Geleychu, Lodumba and Trashithang in the same dzongkhags;
14. The Draft Extension Manual on sustainable farmland management approach had been developed through the experience gained from the Salamjee SLM project;
15. The indigenous knowledge on land management technologies have been enhanced and improved, where by farmers now do contouring and hedge plantation, where as in the past they used, construct stone risers without contours and hedge grasses;
16. Institutionalized community groups for land management and increased cohesion of the groups and carried out the proposed activities with the team spirit.

UNDAF Outcome
CT Outcome
CT Output
Project Location
Project Duration	August 2006 - October 2009
Budget Outlay	US $ 21,356
Link to Workplan	Click on the icon to download