Barbaza Poukandja Yves lives in Bangui, capital of the landlocked Central African Republic (CAR) and its largest city, and maintains a small farm in an agrarian district in the northern part of town where he raises pigs and grows cassava, which serves as a major source of carbohydrates in the tropics. He had also been working as a taxi driver in order to help support the 16 children and 5 grandchildren in his household until he lost his job in April 2022 due to insufficient demand, resulting in the farmers finding themselves with just their tuber fields and a livestock inventory of four adult pigs and two piglets to rely on and thus falling under significant pressure.

The smallholders could not afford additional feed to supplement the 5-7 kg of dried cassava leaves that their pigs ate every day and give them a more-balanced diet, which caused the animals to grow slowly. Yves eventually became aware of a cooperative China-CAR project in which Chinese experts provide assistance and training related to the cultivation and application of Juncao – a robust hybrid grass with the ability to withstand drought that can be used as a substrate for fungi, to control erosion and desertification, and as feed for poultry and livestock among other applications – to farmers living in the area free of charge that had been launched in March 2019 and went to a corresponding demonstration base that had been established nearby in order to explain his situation and learn more about the plant on June 22, 2022.

Some of the Chinese experts working at the base immediately drove to the Bangui native’s farm after they learned about his difficulties, where they demonstrated how to make pig feed with fresh Juncao grass and rice bran and explained advantages that the fermented mixture has over the wild weeds that grow in the region in areas such as nutritional composition, palatability, and economics in detail and left some for him to use.

They returned the next day to see how things were going, and Yves happily informed them that his pigs liked the Juncao-based feed very much. He mentioned that he wanted to grow the plant himself and that it could save him a lot of money, so the experts gave the swineherd everything he needed to do so and began providing him with corresponding technical assistance free of charge as well.

The cooperative China-CAR Juncao project has conducted 16 training sessions covering the process of cultivating the grass and various application scenarios, which 613 people have participated in, established five cooperative organisations designed to promote edible and medicinal fungi cultivation using Juncao substrate and four designed to promote the production of Juncao-based livestock feed, developed three demonstration bases dedicated to bag-produced edible fungi cultivation, and helped 314 households become Juncao cultivation and application demonstration households as of late August 2022, solidifying the friendship between the two countries.

For more information, please contact WFP China COE (wfpcn.coe@wfp.org)