October 26th, 2009 to November 6th, 2009 were special and busy days for the Jilin Project Office. During this period, we held the Extension Training, Dairy Disease Prevention and Production Management Training, and at the same time we welcomed a visit from the main MTOT core members of Yanqi County, Xinjiang Province. Officials from the Yanqi County Animal Husbandry Bureau and the PMO accompanied the MTOT team. Mr. Lai Jinggang, the head of Xinjiang Animal Husbandry Bureau, led the team of visitors. Hujun, the CTA of XJ PO also accompanied this group. The visiting group consisted of 9 people whose main purpose was an exchange of extension and project management experiences with the Jilin PO and PMO. The Jilin PO led by Paul Schneider, the LTTA of Jilin Office and the Jilin PMO led by Mr. Zhou Zhiming, the head of Prefecture AHB, and Mr. Liu Guiqiu, the deputy head of Prefecture AHB, did their utmost to make the XJ group feel welcome. All these trainings and activities proved to be a great success and this success is attributed to the great help and cooperation from the Prefecture AHB, the pilot county-Longjing City AHB, the Hunchun City AHB, the Dunhua AHB and the other city and county AHB offices in Yanbian.

On the Oct. 27th, 2009, Dr. Shi Shangbai, the director of the MOA Extension office, gave a presentation on Extension training in Hunchun City. During the three days training, the trainees learned much from Dr. Shi’s presentations which contained many instructive and lively activities. Dr. Shi also introduced the current situation of the reform of the extension system in China. The trainees learned various concepts of extension training and more about training need assessments and participatory training and evaluation methods. Dr. Shi’s training style with his fundamental language and friendly attitude held the participants focus and kindled an eagerness to further their thinking and understanding on extension training methods. Some trainees said that it was the most interesting course they had taken in their life. A professor attending from the Yanbian University commented that it was very enjoyable to participate in this training; every word contained essential knowledge. Forty eight trainees consisting of professors and teachers from Yanbian University, personnel from each county’s (city’s) AHBs, Animal Epidemic Disease Prevention and Control Centers, Animal Health Supervision Stations and also representatives from the Lady Association and the local farmer co-operatives attended this training. There were 30 male and 18 females attending of which 17 were Korean and 1 Manchu. Paul Schneider, the LTTA of Jilin PO, Peter O’Donnell, STTA of LHESP, Lynda Nichols, MTOT training expert and the ethnic/gender expert Zhang Xuemei aided in the delivery of this training.

After the training concluded, the XJ MTOT, the Jilin MTOT, the PMO and the PO of two provinces met to communicate individual extension experiences and introduce their situations in project implementation. Dr. Shi, Lynda, Paul, Peter and Madame Zhang Xuemei also gave their ideas and proposals.

The Yanbian Yellow Cattle breed is one of the nationally recognized fine breeds of cattle in China. The meat is tasty and belongs to the top grades. “Yanhuang Breed” is a recognized cross-bred line of cattle in China and is the first recognized high quality new breeding line in China. This line is also bred in Yanbian Prefecture, Jilin Province. The raising environment and management model are very good. Accompanied by the Jilin PO, Jilin PMO and the Hunchun AHB, the Xinjiang group visited two big beef cattle farms to review the Best Management Practices. They saw modern facilities, good environments and the high quality “Yanbian Yellow cattle ” and “Yanhuang Breed”. These animals were very impressive to the visitors and left a deep impression on everybody.

On Oct 31st, the Longjing AHB shared their experiences on animal medicine waste and environmental protection with XJ team. They also presented the new notification on “enhancing the disposal of animal medicine waste” which has been issued jointly by the Longjing AHB, the Longjing City Sanitation Bureau and the Environment Bureau and is a follow up to the previous notification about animal medicine waste issued last year. This notification definitively states that the Longjing City AHB will be responsible for the animal medicine waste collection, the Longjing City Sanitation Bureau will be responsible for the disposal and the Environment Bureau will be responsible for the supervision of the entire process. This is the first of this type of notification in China and further reinforces the management of animal medicine waste disposal. Also at this meeting, the LHESP PO gave the achievement certificates to the representatives of the Longjing Grade 5 students who achieved excellent evaluations for their art and composition in the environment activity that was held on April 21st, 2009. Paul and Peter presented the awards. During the award ceremony, the student representatives showed their art and compositions and made oral presentations about their thoughts on environmental protection and talked about the environmental problems that they see. These presentations touched everybody at the meeting.

In Yanbian Prefecture, most dairy farms are located in Dunhua City. Within the past two years, the dairy industry of this city has developed very fast and more and more dairy farmers want to learn and get information. To acknowledge their strong requests, the Dairy Disease Prevention and Management training was held in Dunhua City on Nov 3rd to 5th. Dr. Paul hosted the training and Mr. Liu Guiqiu and Mr. Lai gave speeches in the opening ceremony. This training was presented mainly by Dr. Mel Hoffer, LTTA, Shanxi PO; Dr. Terry Hunt, STTA from Canada; Dr. Peter O’Donnell, STTA from Canada and Huang Fengguo, the Director of Yanbian Prefecture Animal Husbandry Station. Dr. Mel Hoffer introduced Calving and Post-natal Care of the Cow and Calf; Dr. Terry Hunt gave lectures about Production Diseases-Control and Management of the most Common Diseases, for example, mastitis prevention and treatment; Dr. Peter O’Donnell talked about Techniques for Obstetrical and Other Medical Emergencies; Mr. Huang Fengguo presented Dairy Production and Management. Mr. Jin Chengfan, the deputy head of Longjing city AHB and MTOT core member, with the assistance of the XJ MTOT, led the group in a Training Needs Assessment. XJ has advanced experience on dairy cattle production and Hujun, the CTA of XJ PO, not only translated for Terry but also talked about his own experience in dairy raising. Pang Hebiao, one member of the XJ MTOT, introduced the experiences of the XJ MTOT in developing dairy farm Best Management Practices and several practical methods such as the use of the California Mastitis Test, all of which is very useful knowledge for the Dunhua dairy farmers. On the final day of the training, the trainees visited Lvyuan Dairy Farm Co-op with its modern milking and raising system which was beneficial to the XJ group and the Dunhua farmers to help their understanding of modern raising and milking systems.

Sixty nine (69) participants consisting mainly of managers and technicians from dairy farms of Dunhua City and the relative governors of the AHB from each city (county) and from the prefecture attended this training. There were: Male - 51, female - 18, Korean - 5 and Manchu - 1.

The facilitators in this training had a high level of knowledge of their topics and gave the lectures excellently. The participants were satisfied with this training. Their thoughts were that this training helped them get closer to catching up to international standards and was like they went abroad for training. All facilitators gave their lectures with enthusiasm. Discussion between the facilitators and trainees was the most important highlight in this training. Trainees were able to freely and directly present their questions to the four Canadian experts- Paul, Mel, Peter and Terry. Through the three-days of training and discussion, the participants learned the foreign experience, new knowledge and new concepts, which laid a stable foundation in solid concepts for their future work on dairy disease prevention and production management.

In order to further discuss how to facilitate extension work and sustainability of the MTOT-based extension team, the Yanbian the PO, the PMO and the MTOT members of XJ and Jilin plus the Canadian experts met once again in Dunhua. Everybody contributed their opinions and proposals to the extension system and the project’s sustainability, such as: Good attitude is the first step that you should have during the training; Find out and utilize farmers who have capacity as trainers, which will facilitate the transfer and acceptance of knowledge among farmers - it means farmers can learn from farmers; Facilitate the MTOT team development integrally and in depth, which will be helpful on expanding extension team and extension reform and project sustainability; Take advantage of industry as an extension resource and find out the common benefits that government, industry and farmers can participate in. For the MTOT/Extension teams, inter-provincial communication is quite important and they can learn from each other and draw on the strong points of others to offset their own weaknesses, for example the beef industry is the strong point in Yanbian and the swine industry is strong in Sichuan Province.

A lot of things need to be done, a lot of questions need to be resolved and a lot of new methods and concepts need to be delivered, which needs everybody’s effort and a lot of people who can work on extension. With the farmers’ strong requests for knowledge and their enthusiasm for learning, we can continue to do better and achieve sustainable development within the POs, PMOs and the MTOT teams of the two provinces.
 

The leaders participating quite actively	Group discussion and activities	Problem analysis methods in the extension training

Yanbian Yellow Cattle farm visit-communicating with the owner	Mr. Lai Jinggang and Dr. Paul Schneider having an informal discussion	Visiting the Lvyuan Dairy Farm Co-op in Dunhua