Sister Mary Vu Thi Ngoc, head of the climate change group that was established in 2010, visits a farm in Huong Thuy District on July 20. (ucanews.com photo)
Seven years ago, Truong Thi Hat cultivated cassava on a 3,000 square-meter farm that yielded poor harvests due to drought, floods, and termites at Quang Tho village in central Vietnam. She also had to trade in second-hand clothes to earn extra money while her husband worked at construction sites.
Hat’s seven-member family lived in a 12-square-meter ramshackle house, was often short of food and owed six million dong (US$265) to a bank. “At that time we did not know what to do to improve our lives,” Hat said.
Then came a big change in fortunes. The family, in despe-ration, attended a workshop on selecting crops to cope better with climate change.
The workshop was conducted by the Catholic Group for Climate Change Prevention run by sisters in Hue city. Hat, a Buddhist, said nuns offered her 3 million dong to farm various vegetables and to raise poultry and pigs.
She was taught how to make natural fertilizers from dry leaves and straw as well as from manure of poultry and pigs. Now she daily sells carrots, cabbage, okra, cauliflower, green beans and other vegetables to shops in Hue City. She also raises 100 chickens and a dozen pigs.
