2018-2021 “Practice and Dissemination of Sustainable Agriculture Adapted to Environmental and Climate Change in Bangladesh’s Jenaida Province”
Implementation period: April 2018-January 2022
Bangladesh, Jhenaidah District (right figure: red part) is an agricultural area bordering the border with India.
Farmers have long cultivated rice during the rainy season, and during the dry season they have been engaged in dry season crops such as beans, millets, rapeseed, and vegetables.
However, since the 1980s, the high-yielding rice varieties introduced in the ” Green Revolution ” have led farmers to grow rice by groundwater irrigation not only during the rainy season but also during the dry season. The spread of this high-yielding variety of rice has brought great results, such as the self-sufficiency of rice, the staple food of Bangladesh, but on the other hand, it faces the depletion of well water due to overuse of irrigation water.
Share the Planet proposes “agriculture that does not rely on irrigation” for these issues and is working to solve the following issues.
Problems I want to solve
- 1. Excessive reliance on groundwater irrigation during dry season planting
- 2. Even if you want to switch to crops that do not rely on irrigation, there is no good seed supply
Target
300 farmers
Activities being undertaken
- Formation of a farmer’s group
- Developing farmer groups based on training such as classroom lectures and practical training
- Practicing agriculture that does not rely on irrigation based on the training (creating reservoirs to increase the water retention capacity of the land, using compost using earthworms, introducing dry season crops for vegetables, etc.)
- Resident participatory evaluation and target farming with exchanges between farmer groups
- Extension activities to farmers other than the private sector
- Communicating to society and networking among agriculture-related institutions
Attention point
In Bangladesh, it is estimated that 45% of the total working population is farming, but the number of farmers targeted for the project is 300, which is a small part of the total. In order to spread “agriculture that does not rely on irrigation” throughout the country, this project will publish the efforts in local newspapers, hold educational workshops for the mass media and government officials, and carry out educational activities for Bangladeshi society. I am. We are also trying to spread the skills and knowledge from farmers to farmers by providing opportunities for interaction between target farmers and farmers in other regions.
Achievements (~ June 2021)
By June 2021, the number of practitioners of “agriculture that does not rely on irrigation” has increased to 255 out of 300 (138 in the first year and 187 in the second year). Of these, 125 dug ponds in the fields to increase the water holding capacity of the land. At the beginning of the project, there was a concern that the reduction of farmland for the reservoir would put an economic burden on the farmers, but in reality, the income from cash crops and the running cost due to the decrease in irrigation are reduced to improve the income. I know I played.
Instead of rice, dry-season crops such as lentils, mustard, wheat and corn are grown, and their yields are increasing little by little. In addition, fish are cultivated in the reservoir and vegetables are cultivated around the pond, and additional income can be earned from these. In addition, a total of 204 neighboring farmers who were not targeted this time also started to practice agriculture without relying on irrigation due to the influence of this project.
This project, which started in 2018, was interviewed by eight local media newspapers and began to attract attention from the local government. Nowadays, meetings and workshops are held regularly for the purpose of exchanging opinions and exchanges between farmers, and administrative staff and the media also participate in them. This has led the government to encourage more farmers to practice agriculture that does not rely on irrigation.
Project result report ( local video)
You can watch a video of the results of activities in the field for 4 years on Youtube .
* The following is a part of the posted article
MEDIA SUMMARY SBF
This project is being implemented with a grant from the Global Environment Fund .