By Monika Paik from Satkhira
Where there is a will, there is a way Madhobi Rani (29) a woman farmer in south-western coastal Bangladesh believed in this truth and pursued it diligently. She lives in Burigoalini village in the Satkhira District of Bangladesh. Her husband Nimai Gain, who worked as a farm labour, has been suffering from ailments and thus has restricted from hard works. The couple has one son and a daughter and aged mother in-law. Nimai was the only earning member of the family, thus his ailments drew poverty into their lives. Nimai owns only 6 decimals of homestead and have no cultivable land at all. To sustain a family of five with no earning member was an impossible task. The poverty cycle was eternal in the family, and with the increasing price of daily commodities, it was becoming impossible to make both ends meet. Madhobi Rani has been searching options for income. In 2017, she approached to BARCIK for help and started cultivating vegetables since then. She finally saw the potential of farming to improve lives.
However, the journey was fraught with challenges as soil salinity and several natural disasters hit-hard on regular basis in coastal areas. Nonetheless, life took a turn for better for young Madhobi Rani, who was inducted into the training sessions on agro-ecology that includes safe farming, bio-pesticides preparation, farm-yard manure preparation, vermicomposting and home seed preservation etc. As the opportunity appeared before her, she lapped it up in no time. She did not only adopt the learnings in her tiny land but also internalized the concepts of agro-ecological practices. She said, ‘I have been able to reduce the cost of inputs and continue chemical-free production, which is better for consumption and enjoy a good market demand which enables Madhobi to garner a hefty profit.
Over the years, with improved knowledge on practicing agro-ecological farming and renewed enthusiasm to grow their small enterprise, she is now planning to expand area of farms. Madhobi now grows vegetables-eggplants, cabbage, papaya, carrot, leafy vegetables-round the year. However, the most evident outcome of successfully adopting agro-ecology-an ecosystem-based farming approach has been the increase in household income.
BARCIK with the support from Diakonia (Sweden) and Misereor (Germany) has been facilitating climate vulnerable peoples’ initiative in south-western coastal areas of Bangladesh since 2017.
Re-written by ABM Touhidul Alam
