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PrintBanking on a buffalo
Buffaloes provided through Oxfam Australia-supported buffalo banks help poor families with their rice planting and harvesting which, in turn, helps to reduce food shortages. Photo: Jerry Galea/OxfamAUS
“We’re going to visit a buffalo bank,” Savuth, Oxfam Australia’s Program Coordinator, tells me as we speed along the Mekong by fast boat towards the village of Sma Koh in Stung Streng province, northern Cambodia. Immediately an image of cows with large horns standing in queues in front of smiling bank tellers conjures up in my mind.
No, this is a bank with a difference. No cash, brick buildings or safes are involved — just a healthy buffalo and a family in need. The rest is left up to Mother Nature.
A buffalo bank works on a simple premise. A poor rice farming family, with no livestock, is given a buffalo to help them work their fields, cart the harvested rice and use for breeding. In exchange for the buffalo, the family pays 12kg of rice to the community rice bank.
Once they have their buffalo, the family learns how to care for it and keep it healthy – making sure that it receives twice-yearly vaccinations, gets the right foods to eat and doesn’t work too hard when pregnant.
Oxfam Australia provided eight buffaloes to the Sma Koh community about a year ago. They have since produced six offspring.
I am taken to meet Kunthy and Chan Rin who received a buffalo from the ‘bank’ about a year ago. Not only has having a buffalo made rice growing easier for them, but two months ago, their first calf was born.
“Before, when we had no buffalo, we could not do some farming with the rice paddies,” Chan says. “The buffalo is important for our farming. If we have no buffalo, our farming is finished, is gone.”
Buffalo calves are a crucial aspect of the program. The first and third offspring from the buffalo are returned to the ‘bank’ and given to another family to use. The second and fourth offspring are the family’s to keep. After the fourth calf, the original buffalo is also returned to the bank.
Another buffalo bank recipient, Chrim Veng, tells me that having a buffalo has made a big difference to her family’s life.
“Before we had the buffalo, we grew rice by hand, not ploughing,” Chrim says. “Now we have rice for six or seven months of the year. Before we only had enough food for one or two months of the year.”