The integration of livestock on a smallholder farm is key to its productivity. Livestock play a unique role on the farm, transforming plant materials and other waste products into important sources of protein, either for consumption on the farm, or for sale beyond it. Pigs are one of the most efficient in this sense, as they are omnivores, and will eat a wide variety of food types, making them excellent ‘waste disposal’ partners.
On the ECHO Asia Farm we seek to create our own ‘Farm-Generated Feeds’ in order to use the materials we have available on the farm, as well as to bring down our costs of production. In addition to the meat produced, we also highly value the manure, which we compost and use in crop production. To make our feeds we our most readily available resource, banana stems. These are fermented to break them down and used as a base for our pig feeds, being mixed with various other low-cost raw materials that are locally available, including rice bran, corn meal, and fish meal, etc…