Grafting success!

I don’t know abut you, but I have tried to graft fruit trees before, and it is an art.  I am not very good at it.  But the women of Simpang Jernih and Pante Kera (and our new cocoa farmers from Batu Sumbang) are practically Grand Champions.  80% of the grafts they did on their old plantation trees survived.

Here’s what the grafts look like after 2 months:

This is one of he superior varieties purchased through the Local Community Fund grant (Yay Finland!) and you can see how it’s just sproinging into action, and hopefully will be producing fruit by next year.  This means that this old tree can now start to be far more productive.  The issue in Aceh Timur is not the lack of (former) cocoa farms but the age and condition of those trees that remain on them.  A hybrid variety, grafted onto “rootstock” like in the photo below, can practically double the yield of an old tree.  Add to that the weeding and fertilizing the farmers now complete regularly, and you have economic success just round the corner.

But it is really hard work, and every time of year brings its own challenges.  Last season was the rain, now it’s the loose domestic animals. Pretty soon it will be my personal worst nemesis: monkeys.  You don’t see a big return from cocoa, not for the first 18 months.  Which is far too long for many families to have to wait to get enough money to eat.  JMD can help, with the Ministry of Agriculture, by giving families crop seeds to interplant, so they will have some food for their families plus (maybe) a little cash from the surplus, but the cocoa is really where an improved standard of living comes in.

Now is the point in the project where we really have to keep the farmers motivated.  It’s a big hump to get over.  I hope that the women’s success with their grafted trees will convince them to keep the faith.  “Sustainability,” after all, comes down not to a well-designed “logic model” but the motivation and commitment of the people who have to live here.

How are the new grafted trees and seedlings? I’m glad you asked!

After two weeks in Banda Aceh completing training and progress reports, Robert headed back to his second home in Simpang Jernih to see how the new grafts done by the women during training were holding up.

 Here he is, headed back up the river

 

And I’m happy to report that in all three nurseries with a total of 670 but and top grafts, 40% have successfully “taken,” and the remaining 60% are still in the running but will need a few more days to make sure the graft is holding.

60% of the 320 side grafts on mature trees in the field were also successful.

Those are pretty great results.

So this week Robert and the women will do another 150 side grafts and 210 bud/top grafts in the nursery.

Next: how JMD is doing in its quest to get funding from one of the 4 billion RFPs it has answered. 

Hint: it's not for lack of trying!!

A new crop of grafting experts emerges in Aceh Timur

As I’ve said many times before here, grafting of any type is an art form.  And cocoa grafting is especially challenging, since the places where cocoa grows best are not necessarily greenhouse-like conditions.  But the women of Simpag Jernih, Pante Kera and Batu Sumbang proved equal to the challenge and during the week-long training grafted hundreds of buds and branches onto both nurser rootstock and mature trees in their fields.

The trainer held the training twice, in two different locations, for the convenience of the farmers, to eliminate additional boat trips between villages.

The trainings covered many aspects of a successful grafting process.  JMD has given this training before, but refreshers are always needed; this is one of the most important, and difficult skills foe a successful cocoa farmer to master.

There was a little classroom presentation, in which Robert assisted:

And a bit of field-based explanation prior to the practicum:

Then the farmers went straight to the nursery to learn the proper way to prepare the shoots for grafting, and the tree or seedling for accepting the graft

Robert also took a short video of the women practicing grafting the rootstock in the nursery, that JMD willl post to its Facebook Page (unfortunately it is too big to load onto this page; we're just learning abou t how to control the file size of videos).  Even if you don’t understand Acehnese or Bahasa you can tell they are having fun; one of the great things about this project is that it takes skills the women already possess (their ability to do very delicate and exacting work with their hands) and transfers it to an economically viable livelihood. 

Each woman has been given grafting tools and tape by the program, and did many top and bud grafts in the nursery, onto which were placed plastic baggies for added protection.

Grafts in the farmers’ plantations required training in side grafting and protection.

This is the first training that our three new farmer beneficiaries, from Batu Subang, were attending.

And it’s also the beginning of a “training of the trainer” for a farmer in Pante Kera, who’s been very successful on her own farm and will act as a peer mentor to her colleagues

Was this a great training or was this a great training? 

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