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CARE SDU Reports and Studies Agricultural Knowledge

HOW FARMERS LEARN

CARE RURAL LIVELIHOODS PROGRAMME

July 2004

Comments are welcome and should be sent to [email protected] [email protected], and [email protected]

CARE SDU Reports and Studies

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STUDY FACILITATORS

Mick Howes; Consultant Kamal Kar; consultant

Brigitta Bode; Social Development Coordinator, Rural Livelihoods Programme

RESEARCH TEAM

Social Development Unit

Anowarul Haq; Project Manager Bipul Chandra Dev; Project Development Officer

Murad Bin Aziz; Project Development Officer Apurba Dev Roy (consultant)

Partner NGO staff

Malaka Begum (Field Trainer, SKS) Setara Begum, Field Trainer (UDP) Bozlar Rahman, Field Trainer (UDP)

Field trainers from study locations

Hedaytul Islam (Shabgi Takurgaon)

S.M. Jaforuzzaman (Shabgi, Takurgaon) Daisy Parvin (GO-IF Thakurgaon)

Md Shajahan (PO Shabgi, Takurgaon) Kurshida Zahan (Shabgi, Takurgaon)

Azad Hossain Zoddar, (GO-IF Thakurgaon)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are very grateful to the following for allowing their staff to take part and for their more general support:

Khaleda Afroz; Project Manager, GO-Interfish Project

Md. Golam Sarowar Talukder; Project Manager, GO-Interfish Project Nirjharinee Hasan; Project Manager, GO-Interfish Project

Abdul Awal, Project Coordinator, GO-Interfish Project

We would also like to express our appreciation to:

Keith Fisher and Noel Magor for their valuable advice and assistance in designing the study. Pancho Boeren for his helpful comments on a preliminary draft. RLP staff

from Dinajpur and Thakurgaon for the feedback and suggestions provided in workshops at which preliminary findings were discussed

the people of Azimuddinshah, Jabbershah, Chakaldi and Hatpara for their patient

explanations and help in conducting the various exercises upon which the research was based


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CONTENTS Page 1 Introduction 01 1.1 Literature review 01 1.2 How the study was conducted 06 2 Overview of findings 07 2.1 Study communities 07 2.2 Types of agricultural knowledge 09 2.3 Knowledgeable people and innovators at community level 10 2.4 Learning and knowledge transfer within communities 11 2.5 Learning and knowledge transfer from beyond the community 14 2.6 Learning processes and variations by gender and class 18 2.7 Supporting poor people’s livelihoods 19 3 Azimuddinshah 22 3.1 Location and resources 22 3.2 Kinship and class 22 3.3 Agricultural development 23 3.4 How the BR29 rice variety spread 25 3.5 How the BR28 variety spread 27 3.6 How a marginal farmer is constrained from using a new variety 28 4 Jabbershah 30 4.1 Location and resources 30 4.2 Kinship and class 30 4.3 Agricultural development 33 4.4 Innovators and early adopters 33 4.5 Diffusion of new rice varieties 35 4.6 Labour groups 36 4.7 Ishak plot history 37 5 Chakaldi 40 5.1 Location and resources 40 5.2 Kinship and class 40 5.3 Agricultural development 40 5.4 Changes in vegetable cultivation 43 5.5 Safia case study 47 5.6 Najma case study 50 5.7 Mocha Kulsum Begom case study 54 5.8 Kader Miah and Mofiz Uddin plot history 56 5.9 Azizul plot history 59 5.10 Liyaka plot history 62 6 Hatpara 65 6.1 Location and resources 65 6.2 Kinship and class 66 6.3 Agricultural development 69 6.4 How Grameen Bank triggered a process of innovation 71 6.5 Lutfa case study 72 6.6 Afiza case study 75 References 79


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FIGURES 2.1 Households by class and para 07 3.1 Azimuddinshah: land types and current cropping patterns 23 3.2 Lineage, class and FFS membership by household 24 3.3 Households by class 25 3.4 Preference ranking of amon rice varieties by farmers 29 4.1 Jabbershah: land types and current cropping patterns 31 4.2 Jabbershah: lineage, class and FFS membership by household 32 4.3 Jabbershah: households by class 33 4.4 Key sources of knowledge 34 4.5 Ishak: crops grown on a selected plot 38 5.1 Chakaldi: land types and current cropping patterns 41 5.2 Chakaldi: lineage, class and FFS membership by household 42 5.3 Chakaldi: households by class 43 5.4 New cropping practices promoted by organisation 54 5.5 Sequence of adoption of new seedling preparation practices 47 5.6 Safia: time matrix 49 5.7 Najma: time matrix 53 5.8 Mocha Kulsum Begom: time matrix 55 5.9 Kader Miah/Mofiz Uddin: crops grown by year 58 5.10 Azizul: crops grown by year 61 5.11 Liyakat: crops grown by year 64 6.1 Hatpara: land types and current cropping patterns 67 6.2 Hatpara: lineage, class and FFS membership by household 68 6.3 Hatpara: households by class 69 6.4 Ranking of non-cereal crops by economic status of household 71 6.5 Lutfa: time matrix 74 6.6 Afiza: time matrix 77

ANNEXE FIGURES 1.1 Primary data collection research methods 81 2.1 Comparing communities 83 2.2 Proverbs 84 3.1 Community time matrix: Azimuddinshah 85 3.2 Distribution of BR28 seed and seedlings from Ahmed Ali 86 3.3 The dissemination of knowledge in Azimuddinshah: Animesh’ network 87 3.4 The dissemination of knowledge in Azimuddinshah: Debesh’ network 88 4.1 Jabbershah: land types and earlier cropping patterns 89 4.2 Jabbershah: community time matrix 90 4.3 Ishak. Typical per bigha yields, costs and returns 91 5.1 Chakaldi: evolving patterns of cultivation 92 5.2 Changing techniques for vegetable cultivation 93 5.3 New cropping practices promoted by type of vegetable 95 5.4 Safia. Lessons learnt and application of new skills from Shabge 96 5.5 Najma: costs and returns to cultivation before and after training 97 5.6 Najma: cropping pattern after training, plot 2 98 5.7 Kader Miah: yields and returns by crop by year 99 5.8 Azizul: yields and returns by crop and year 1005.9 Liyakat: recent plot layout 1015.10 Liyakat: crops grown 1025.11 Liyakat: summary plot history 1036.1 Hatpara: evolving patterns of cultivation 1046.2 Hatpara: shifting patterns of vegetable & other non-cereal cultivation 105


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ACRONYMS BADC Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation BDT Bangladesh Taka (USD 1 ≈ BDT 60 at time of publication) BFF Beyond Farmer First BPH Brown Plant Hopper BRDB Bangladesh Rural Development Board BS Block Supervisor DAE Department of Agricultural Extension DTW Deep Tubewell FF Farmer First FFS Farmer Field School FT Field Trainer GO-IF Greater Opportunities for Integrated Rice-Fish Culture HADS Humanitarian Agency for Development Services HYV High Yielding Variety PNGO Partner NGO PRA Participatory Rural Appraisal RDRS Rangpur Dinajpur Relief Services RLP Rural Livelihoods Programme RPK Rural People’s Knowledge STW Shallow Tubewell T&V Training and Visit TO Technical officer YLB Yard Long Bean GLOSSARY amon main monsoon rice crop aus early monsoon rice crop bari homestead bigha 0.48 acres bilani zamin seasonally inundated water body where cultivation takes place boro main irrigated rice crop chatal rice mill chira chaffed rice gushti patrilineage kacca rough, unsurfaced kamla Job katha 0.0165 acres khas government khoi puffed rice kush lease madrassa Muslim religious school maund unit of weight. About 40 kgs. muri others for parched rice pait specific task para hamlet, cluster of houses piker trader pukka finished, surfaced salish local adjudication shabge vegetable swarna HYV amon variety t. amon main monsoon rice crop


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1. INTRODUCTION All agricultural extension approaches employed in Bangladesh make more or less explicit assumptions about how knowledge can be transmitted to and/or acquired by an initial primary group of contact farmers, and how a subsequent process of dissemination to a wider group of secondary adopters might take place. None, however, appears to be grounded in a very clear understanding of the ways in which different types of farmer actually absorb, try out or adapt emerging possibilities. These issues are of central importance to CARE’s Rural Livelihoods Programme (RLP) as it tries to make sense of what has been achieved in more than a decade of working with Farmer Fields Schools (FFS) and begins to design a more comprehensive future strategy for the promotion of the livelihoods of poor men and women. What follows is a preliminary mapping of this large and quite complicated field. Specifically, an attempt will be made: • to identify what types of agricultural knowledge rural people possess and to

identify the most knowledgeable people at community level. • to understand how learning takes place and knowledge is transferred within

individual communities. • to identify and assess the effects of the major learning and transfer processes

deriving from beyond communities themselves. • to explain how all of the above vary by social class, gender, age and levels of

literacy. • to carry forward the process of understanding how gender relations affect RLP

activities. The paper begins with a brief overview of the relevant national and international literature, goes on to describe how the study was conducted, and concludes with an extended set of case study materials drawn from a series of community level investigations. The central section introduces the communities, highlights the major findings arising, and draws conclusions for CARE’s future work. It should, by itself, be sufficient for a reader requiring a quick overview, but is accompanied by extensive references that will make it possible to dip selectively into the cases where greater depth is required or supporting evidence needs to be reviewed. 1.1 Literature review Scoones and Thompson (1993) suggest that there are three recent major schools of thought on how rural people’s knowledge (RPK) of agriculture is constructed and transmitted: the diffusion model first propagated by Rogers (1983); the populist “Farmer First” alternative (Chambers et al, 1989); and the more recent and theoretically grounded body of work which they label “Beyond Farmer First” (Scoones and Thompson, 1994). Their typology provides a convenient device for structuring our own overview of the literature. 1.1.1 The diffusion school Based on Rogers’ initial research with maize farmers in the United States, the diffusion school, in its simplest form, represents knowledge as something which is generated in centres of innovation, and then passes outwards via progressive


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“opinion leaders” to the wider farming population. The process is linear, and the farmers’ role is almost entirely passive; they simply elect either to adopt or not. Although this view was subsequently softened to allow for the possibility of “re-invention”, where farmers might modify and adapt the transmitted knowledge to their own conditions, it is the original version that has proved highly influential in practice. It dovetailed neatly with the modernisation-cum-transfer of technology model which shaped early development thinking in the 1960s and 1970s, sat comfortably with the time-bounded and objective-driven project modus operandi favoured by donors, and was highly influential in shaping the Training and Visit (T&V) system of extension that was extensively promoted by the World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s. Simple diffusionism also struck a powerful chord at national and more local levels with scientific and bureaucratic elites in hierarchically structured societies such as Bangladesh. 1.1.2 The Farmer First alternative By the 1980s, however, it was becoming apparent to many in the development community that whilst a modernisation approach might work reasonably well as a means of building physical infrastructure, it was far less adequately equipped to address the “messier” needs of the rural areas and small scale agricultural producers. A new school of thought, which came to be known as “Farmer First” (FF), was one of the outcomes flowing from this realisation. Drawing heavily on academic anthropology and embraced both by many in the emerging NGO movement and sympathetic representatives of related academic disciplines, this did not reject diffusionism out of hand, but rather criticised it for variously ignoring, undervaluing or openly discrediting RPK. Advocates of FF set out to characterise RPK by showing what was distinctive about it, especially although not exclusively vis-à-vis “scientific” thought, and to demonstrate its practical utility. In so doing, they sought to pave the way for a re-structuring of applied research and technology dissemination where the dominance of formally organised agricultural science would give way to a more balanced relationship with the rural producers it sought ostensibly to serve. At its most basic, as seen in recent publications in Bangladesh (Khan 2000, Sillitoe 2000), the emerging paradigm tried simply to document local practice in areas such as pest management, seed storage or agro-forestry, in the process compartmentalising it in ways that mirrored the concerns of particular scientific disciplines. But others were at pains to emphasise the holistic nature of RPK, pointing to the multiple and often complex criteria that rural people used in, for example, assessing new crop varieties, and contrasting these with the typically narrow scientific focus on increasing yields. Another key concern was to demonstrate that RPK was not “traditional” or static. Cultures have never existed in isolation, it was argued, but rather engage in an ongoing series of interactions and exchanges at the boundary through which the pool of knowledge is augmented and evolves. Changes in the physical environment inevitably evoke responses in practice and generate new forms of understanding. Over and above all of this, as a number of instances from Bangladesh demonstrate, natural curiosity and the imperative to survive are themselves sufficient to ensure that RPK continues to evolve in a dynamic fashion. Cases, for example, are cited of farmers conducting germination tests of wheat seed on bamboo leaves (Biggs 1980), devising sugar solution sprays as an alternative to chemical forms of pest control


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(Azad 2000), adapting introduced rice paddle threshers (Biggs 1980), and more generally designing intensive multiple cropping systems (Brammer 1980). Going beyond the documentation of the forms in which it appears, certain analysts sought to capture the more fundamental nature of RPK. At the most general level, it has been represented as primarily inductive, in contra-distinction to the more deductive approach characteristically employed by formal science. More detailed characterisations have suggested that it tends to operate through the use of metaphor or bipolar, oppositional concepts, with Sillitoe’s (2000b) discussion of indigenous soil classifications in Bangladesh providing an illuminating working through of the latter. In a similar vein, Chapman (1979) explores indigenous conceptions of time, showing how the Bengali system of months (see e.g. Figure 3.1) provides a sounder basis for understanding key climatic events and related agricultural practices than its western equivalent. Inspired by these analyses, NGOs such as the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme and World Neighbors have actively explored new forms of interaction between formal science and RPK, and there has also been official recognition, as seen in Bangladesh’s New Agricultural Extension Strategy (1999), of the need to take rural people’s perspectives on board. But whilst the FF school has undoubtedly contributed to documenting RPK, to beginning to grasp its underlying structures, and in bringing its attention to wider bodies of development practitioners, it has had relatively little to say about our central question of how farmers learn. 1.1.3 Farmers’ Experiments in Africa This is the challenge taken up by Sumberg and Okali (1997), who investigated how farmers conduct experiments in a number of Sub-Saharan African countries, and in so doing sought explicitly to test the feasibility and desirability of new more collegial relations between farmers and formal agricultural research. Whilst the very different context of their study means that their findings cannot necessarily be expected to hold good in Bangladesh, they arrive at five sets of conclusions that, at the very least, warrant serious consideration. The first concerns the broad nature of the learning process. Farmers’ learning is embedded in the local context and yields site-specific information. The tendency to experiment is widespread and should be regarded as a normal feature of rural society. The majority of experiments that take place are planned and proactive. That is to say, a conscious attempt is made to create conditions or treatments in advance that will allow comparisons to be made in a systematic fashion. Only a minority are reactive, i.e. taking place under unplanned circumstances and in response to an unexpected event. Only 15% of experiments involved the testing of a new crop and very few were of a more radical nature. Most farmers’ research seeks incremental improvements by testing minor modifications to an established combination of agronomic practices such as fertiliser and pesticide rates, times of application, varieties and inter- and intra-row spacing, within the context of a given production system. Such fine tuning or tinkering will typically involve side-by-side trials and not infrequently extends over a period of several years. The second concerns the influence of the environment on the rate of learning. People are found to experiment most where they have a high level of commitment to farming, where they are relatively unfamiliar with the environment in which they are operating, and where farming systems themselves are highly diversified. They are also stimulated by the presence and recognition of a difficult problem, the most extreme example of which would be how to deal with marked environmental


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degradation. Commercialisation and growing contact with markets has a similar effect. So, generally, does exposure to extension services, although this may, under certain circumstances, actually undermine confidence and the propensity to learn. More generally, the rate of learning tends to accelerate with the general pace of change in the environment, and to encourage the adaptive form of experimentation, with curiosity motivated experiments perhaps predominating in more stable circumstances. Thirdly, the research asks: who has the opportunity to learn? The literature cited reveals conflicting positions, some authors suggesting that virtually everybody experiments, and others that opportunities to do so are highly constrained by personal, social, cultural and economic factors. More specifically, there are some who would argue that, “necessity being the mother of invention”, the poor are forced to innovate more, whilst others suggest their status affords them lesser opportunities to do so. Somberg and Okalis’s own evidence leans towards the more inclusive view. Although early adopters are likely to be male, better educated, have higher social status and are likely to have strong connections with outside agencies, and although they are perhaps somewhat more inclined to perform proactive experiments and to follow through their tests in a more sustained fashion, no strong correlation is found between wealth/status and overall propensity to experiment. Certain individuals are recognised as having special interests and in-depth knowledge, but there is little evidence of a distinct group of research-minded farmers as such. There is, however, a clear tendency for women to research less than men. A proximate cause appears to lie in their inferior access to the commercial sector where much experimentation takes place, and to resources more generally. Socially defined gender roles underlie both of these factors as well as exercising a more pervasive influence in their own right. Fourthly, the authors explore how knowledge is transmitted, drawing a distinction between local and non-local sources. The former include family, neighbours, the subject matter specialists mentioned above, and on a more occasional basis, projects and extension personnel who link to the non-local. Relatively little research has been done on the precise mechanisms operating within particular localities, or on how aware people are of each other’s experiments, although in general terms it is clear that discussions, observation, visits, material exchanges (and sometimes even stealing) can all play a part. Notions of trust will often be critical in how, and to what extent, these possibilities are exploited. Little evidence is found of clearly bounded networks within which such exchanges take place or of regularised patterns of inter-communication between local researchers. It is, however, apparent that small numbers of key farmers, looking very much like Roger’s “opinion leaders”, play a critical role in drawing external knowledge into local domains. But it is also true that opportunities to forge external links are increasing as communications improve, mobility increases and the range of technical and more general development programmes expands. Finally, implications for farmer/research relations are outlined. The key conclusion drawn from all of the other observations is that since many farmers already do research, and since the way it is done is not essentially very dissimilar from professional scientific practice, it may be less important than has popularly been supposed to re-structure the research process and the division of labour between scientist and farmer on which it is currently based. The emphasis should rather be on increasing the quantum of materials on which farmers can conduct experiments. There is a need to get techniques, information and varieties into their hands earlier; to provide them with more “rough diamonds” that they can then cut and polish according to their own particular requirements.


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1.1.4 Beyond Farmer First The most recent “Beyond Farmer First” (BFF) school would agree with some of these conclusions. It is, for example, acknowledged by this school that rural people “often engage in the cumulative exploration of agricultural alternatives, employing progressive adaptive learning through hypothesis formulation and the application of replicable methodologies” (Scoones and Thompson, 1993) in a fashion corresponding closely to formal agricultural science. But even at the level of the experimental process itself, important differences are noted, with farmers found to be engaged more in “performances” than plans; in fitting available resources to changing circumstances to make it through the season, rather than in replication and comparison as such. This reflects a broader tendency to emphasise the importance of discontinuity and to downplay the characteristics different agricultural actors hold in common, thus parting company with Somberg and Okali’s critical final conclusion. This position is rooted in what is described as “post-Newtonian social science”. This holds that the world cannot be disaggregated into separate variables and linear cause-effect relationships, but is rather dynamic and complex, sometimes rapidly changing and often chaotic. From this perspective, there is no single truth, but instead multiple, contested realities, each with potentially conflicting social and normative interests and diverse and discontinuous configurations of knowledge. BFF thus departs both from the simple diffusionists and the earlier FF school. The former are taken to task for suggesting that neat distinctions can be drawn between “producers”, “disseminators” and “users” of knowledge; and that knowledge creation/dissemination can be viewed purely in terms of linkage or transfer. The latter are criticised for failing to recognise the social and political complexity of the situation where farmers interact with researchers and extensionists; for assuming undifferentiated communities; and for not appreciating that RPK is fragmentary, partial and provisional in nature, rather than a unified body: all of which, in turn, gives rise to what is described as “naïve activism”. A number of more specific propositions follow from the broad post-Newtonian perspective. The first is that knowledge is constructed through rural people’s practices as situated agents. They are agents because they are actively engaged in the generation, acquisition and classification of knowledge. They are situated because this engagement occurs in cultural, economic, agro-ecological and socio-political contexts that are products of local and non-local processes. Knowledge, in other words, is something that is not so much transferred, as constantly transformed. The next proposition is that this agency resides in what is described as “knowledge repertoires, discursive or cognitive frames, existing networks of knowledge, accumulated social experience, commitments, and culturally acquired dispositions of actors” (Long and Villareal). New information can only be absorbed upon the basis of these pre-existing frameworks, which it then duly re-constructs. Two linked concepts are of particular significance in understanding how this takes place: epistemic community and encounters of horizon. The former refers to a group of people holding a broadly common perspective, the latter to interactions occurring between such groups and the wider world. Attention is drawn to the need to focus on interface situations or “critical points of intersection between different social systems, fields or levels of social order where structural discontinuities, based upon differences of normative value and social interest, are most likely to be found” (Long


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and Villareal 1994). Typically these social situations will reveal actors seeking either to bridge or struggle against social and cognitive differences. The final key proposition is that the generation and utilisation of knowledge is not merely a matter of instrumentalities, technical efficiencies or the mediation of understandings, but involves elements of control, authority and power that are embedded in social relationships. Put in slightly different terms: “the criteria of what constitutes knowledge, what is to be included and who is to be designated as qualified to know involves acts of power” (Foucault cited by Scoones and Thompson). As such, the relationships between the local and non-local, and between different types of farmer, needs to be seen as an ongoing pattern of struggle, negotiation, cooperation and compromise. Ultimately then, power structures have a determining effect but do not determine absolutely. In any given situation, there will be both constraining and enabling forces at work. There is always room for manoeuvre and that room is always being re-defined in the light of changing circumstances. Non-naïve activists will seek to identify what this is and proceed accordingly. 1.2 How the Study was conducted The study was designed by Kamal Kar, Mick Howes and Brigitta Bode in consultation with members of the Social Development team. Fieldwork was conducted over a period of four weeks by the team with Kar leading for the first two weeks and Howes for the second. Additional assistance was provided by a small number of field trainers and representatives from RLP partner organisations. Enquiries focussed mainly on two former GO-IF communities in Dinajpur district and two former Shabge para in Thakurgaon, with brief side visits being made to one or two other locations. The studies in GO-IF locations were able to build on earlier enquiries, whilst the Shabge para were being investigated for the first time, and therefore required more initial setting up. Each investigation began by exploring the physical environment and key resources, the seasonal pattern of agricultural activities, the incidence of different social classes, and kinship structures. Most of the investigations conducted thereafter took the form of case studies. These looked variously at the introduction of different crops, the factors facilitating and constraining adoption, and the agricultural histories of selected individuals and plots. In addition, the team drew on other data sets to brainstorm agriculture histories and anticipate possible future scenarios. A variety of mainly PRA methods were used, supplemented by key informant and focus group discussions. (Details of the methods used to investigate individual topics, further topics investigated, and the particular difficulties encountered appear in Annexe Figure 1.) Both lead facilitators worked with team members to analyse and complete preliminary write up of the materials that they collected. Preliminary results were then presented to and reviewed with representatives from RLP and partner organisations in separate sessions held in the two districts, and a shorter seminar presentation was made for head office staff. Howes then took the lead in drafting the overall report. The authors are reasonably confident of the veracity of the materials presented, but it should be recognised that the subject investigated is large and complicated. Much more time would ideally be required to delve into it in a more comprehensive and authoritative fashion. It is, however, hoped that the insights arising are sufficient to contribute to the initiation of the new and broader livelihoods approach, and that this, in turn, will serve to throw more light on the issues reviewed.


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2. STUDY OVERVIEW 2.1 Communities As noted earlier, the four para selected for the study had all previously been the sites of CARE FFS, with two from the former GO-IF project in Dinajpur District and two from the former Shabge project in neighbouring Thakurgaon. Each is introduced in some detail at the beginning of the relevant chapters. What follows builds around Figure 2.1 and Annexe Figure 2.1, and is only intended as a brief overview of their major characteristics. 2.1.1 Azimuddinshah Azimuddinshah is a former GO-IF site and was studied previously in an investigation into Social Capital (CARE, 2003). It lies a few miles from the nearest tarmac road. It was first settled at least fifty years ago and now has 77 households. The majority are Muslims and all are descended from a common ancestor. There is a sizeable Hindu minority, all of whom again trace their ancestry to an original settler, and a small number of Christians who appear to have converted from Hinduism quite recently. The Muslims are on average much better off and contain a cluster of closely related large land owners who dominate the para. Most of the households fall into the vulnerable and marginal categories and the proportion of landless is quite low. Figure 2.1: Number and percentage of households by class and para

GO-IF Shabge

Category

Definition

Az

imud

dins

hah

Jabb

ersh

ah

Cha

kald

i

Hat

para

No 9 10 10 5 Surplus or secure Own 4+ acres or

large business or professional employment % 12 18 14 6

No 24 14 27 22 Vulnerable land owners

Owns 1-4 acres or leases in > 1 acre

% 32 25 37 28

No 26 15 19 26 Marginal farmers, tenants

Owns or operates 0.05 – 0.99 acres

% 34 26 26 34

No 17 18 17 24 Landless

Owns and operates < 0.05 acres

% 22 31 23 32

No 77 57 73 77 Total

% 100 100 100 100


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The land is predominantly low lying silt and silty loam, with smaller areas of medium and higher elevation. Following the introduction of HYVs in the 1980s and 1990s, boro and t.amon became the main rotation, but there are also significant areas under wheat/t.amon, and vegetables. Government initially played an important part in promoting HYVs, but its influence has diminished in recent years. BRAC and Grameen have both been active in the para, but have focussed mainly on credit and education and have not been directly involved in the promotion of agricultural activities. Our studies here focussed mainly on the diffusion of new rice varieties and varietal preferences. 2.1.2 Jabbershah Jabbershah is another former GO-IF site and was previously studied in the North-West Institutional Analysis (CARE, 2002). Like Azimuddinshah, it again lies some distance from the nearest tarmac road. It seems likely to have been settled about a century ago and now has 57 households. All are Muslims and the majority are descended from the original settler, but there are also some smaller lineages founded by more recent arrivals. The major lineage contains a sizeable cluster of large surplus farmers, but the community as a whole also has a substantial number of landless households, and is the most polarised of the four we investigated. More than 80% of the land is low lying with loam soils and boro/t.amon is the dominant rotation. Bamboo and fruit trees are grown on scattered areas of upland but there is only a very small area under vegetable cultivation. Once again here, government extension services played an important part in introducing HYVs, but have not been active in the community in recent years. Prior to CARE’s arrival, both Caritas and Come to Work had operated in the para, but neither intervention was on a very significant scale. Our study here once again looked at HYV diffusion as well as considering innovator behaviour, labour groups and an individual plot history. 2.1.3 Chakaldi Chakaldi is a former Shabge site in Thakurgaon district. It is directly linked by tarmac road to the district headquarters a few miles away. The para currently has 73 households. All are Muslim and most only migrated to the area in the last generation. They came from areas to the east of the Jamuna, with many taking over the land of former Hindu inhabitants who were moving to India. There are no large lineages and a great deal of inter-marriage has taken place within the community. There are only a few economically secure households but also only a relatively small number of landless. Most households fall into the vulnerable and marginal categories. Land is predominantly of high and medium high elevation, with mainly sandy loam and loam soils. Wheat and t.amon is the most common rotation, followed by potato and t.amon, and only 10% of the land is devoted exclusively to paddy cultivation. The HYV technologies introduced in the 1980s and 1990s have again played an important part here. Vegetables have become increasingly important over the last decade and are now grown for at least part of the year on about 25% of the land area. The para continues to receive a relatively large amount of support from the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) Block Supervisor (BS) and has also


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been targeted by a range of NGOs, including ASHA, BRAC, Grameen and World Vision. Our investigations here covered NGO vegetable promotion and variety diffusion, and included a series of individual and plot case studies. 2.1.4 Hatpara Our final community, Hatpara, is another former Shabge site, and is the most remote location studied. It was first settled about 100 years ago, and there are now 77 households. It has a dominant lineage that may be traced back to the original inhabitant, but has also attracted a number of more recent and un-related settlers. Like Chakaldi, it is again characterised by an unusually high incidence of inter-marriage. The proportion of surplus households is smaller than elsewhere and the dependence upon non-farm livelihoods greater. Although vulnerable and marginal households are again in the majority, the incidence of landlessness is greater here than elsewhere, making the para the poorest of the four considered. It also has the highest land and the poorest soil. Much of the area has only being opened up to cultivation in the last 10-15 years. Potato, grown in rotation with either maize or water melon, accounts for a little more than half the total land area, followed by wheat/t.amon and vegetables. Contact with the BS again appears to have been rather higher than in the Dinajpur communities and NGOs have again been active, although not quite on the same scale as in Chakaldi. We focussed here on crop ranking, labour groups and farmer and plot case studies. 2.2 Types of agricultural knowledge

Our investigations in the four para suggested that people’s knowledge of agriculture may be divided into a number of different categories, each of which ultimately merge into a seamless web.

In the first place, they have an intimate knowledge of the physical environment. They can classify soils and topography. They understand how topography can be modified for different purposes (Kader Miah Section 5.8), and levelled to perform existing functions more efficiently (Ishak 4.7). They have their own calendar and way of identifying seasons, which they have traditionally drawn on to structure and communicate information about the timing of key activities (Annexe Figure 2.2). They have at least some understanding of frequently occurring pests and how these may be counteracted. Rural people also have a detailed knowledge of crops and in general will apply a much wider range of criteria than agricultural scientists in assessing which best meet their requirements. Taking different varieties of rice as an example, these will include: the length of the growing season; liability to chaffing, lodging and shattering; pest resistance; ease of threshing; taste; suitability for making chira; the period for which vitality can be maintained; and a range of further factors (Annexe Figure 2.3). This knowledge is accompanied by a detailed understanding of the production process, covering among other things: seed selection and storage, plant spacing, fertiliser application, use of pesticides, harvesting and post-harvest processing. All of this, in turn, is underpinned by an appreciation of the way in which particular crops behave in relation to different types of soil and topography, and of how different crops may be combined and rotated in order to maintain soil fertility (Liyakat 5.10), or to provide insurance against the failure of any individual crop in a particular season (amon in Jabbereshah 4.5). Increasingly, also, they are gathering and utilising


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market information in order to obtain appropriate inputs and to make informed decisions about which crops will offer the best returns (Azizul 5.9). Ultimately all of these other types of knowledge are drawn together in livelihood strategies, where different types of agricultural knowledge are deployed in order best to meet the specific requirements of different households with their varying capital endowments (Safia 5.6). What rural people know and what they need to know are in an almost continual state of evolution. Climatic conditions may well be undergoing a fundamental shift as global warming takes hold. Much of the physical environment is modified on a regular basis by deposits of alluvium, and large areas are subject to the more occasional but also much more dramatic effects of rivers changing course (Chakaldi 5.2). The closing of the land frontier and the intensification of cultivation are leading to reductions in soil fertility, the effects of which may be especially severe on more recently cleared and less fertile upland areas (Hatpara 6.3). HYVs, which are now the norm in rice and wheat production, and are rapidly coming to dominate vegetable cultivation as well, lose their viability and must be replaced after only a few years of use, where the local varieties they have displaced could go on being used almost indefinitely. The increasing commercialisation of production, and in particular the rapid changes in the relative market values of different types of vegetable, means that calculations about profitability must be revised on a regular basis. Former mainstays like jute are no longer in demand, and sugar, which for a time appeared to offer a substitute, is now much less commercially attractive than it was a few years ago (Chakaldi 5.3). At the individual household level, dependency ratios and livelihood strategies change as children are born, grow up and marry, and as adults grow older and die. 2.3 Knowledgeable people and innovators at community level Our enquiries also confirmed that all rural people have a lot of agricultural knowledge. But different people know about different things, and some are more knowledgeable than others. In the predominantly rice growing communities, direct enquiries were made into who knew what, and further evidence was collected in the course of the various crop dissemination studies. Both of these sources suggested that the clear majority of those who know most, and are most prepared to push forward the frontiers of what is known within their para, are either surplus farmers themselves or the sons of those enjoying that status. This group of individuals normally have the widest range of contacts and the best sources of information, and are visited first by external agencies coming to the community. They are also best able to procure inputs, and to take risks and to experiment, which is especially important when adoption proves problematic, as in the case of BR29 (Azimuddinshah 3.4). Smaller, more vulnerable farmers cannot afford to take risks to the same degree. They tend rather to wait to see what their better off counterparts do first, and only to adopt a new variety themselves when it becomes possible to obtain seed more cheaply from others in the area who have already cultivated the variety and have surplus stocks that they can supply (eg Ishak 4.7). Whilst not big enough or confident enough to be innovators themselves, the amount of land owned in such instances at least allows the security of growing more than one variety at a time, and provides an element of insurance on the comparatively rare occasions where new varieties are tried out. For those in more marginal positions, there is often little alternative other than to conform to what others are doing in order to ensure


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availability of irrigation and avoid exposure to pests and predators at the end of the season (Birendra 3.6). But even in the mainly rice-based communities not all specialists are drawn from the highest social class. The recognition and respect given to a poorer vegetable specialist in Jabbershah is interesting and of potential significance (4.4). It suggests that a gifted individual with limited means is still, under certain circumstances, able to experiment, and that others recognise ability wherever it appears, and do not simply follow the lead of dominant individuals. The person in question might have been able to enjoy an even more prominent position if local circumstances had permitted vegetable cultivation to take place on a more extensive scale. In addition, the increasing significance of labour gangs, who are recruited from among the ranks of the landless, and who cover wide geographical areas in their search for work, opens up a second possible front for the socially “upward” transmission of new agricultural knowledge. The more upland communities, with their comparatively diversified patterns of crop production, also exhibit a predominantly downwards pattern of transmission of new ideas, but this is rather less pronounced. The difference, in part, appears to be a function of the smaller number of surplus farmers, and of the likelihood that those in dominant positions will be less heavily engaged in agricultural pursuits. It also reflects the greater significance of vegetable production, where the varietal preferences of the better off tend to diverge from those of the poorer households, and where poorer cultivators appear more willing to take risks than they are with rice. 2.4 Learning and the transfer of knowledge within communities The study has also taught us quite a lot about how knowledge is passed on and adapted within people’s own communities. 2.4.1 The immediate family Early learning occurs mainly within the immediate family group. Parents normally perform the dominant role in teaching their children, but elder siblings, and perhaps also grandparents, aunts and uncles may also sometimes play a part, and will step in when a child loses a parent whilst still young (Kasem son of Safia 5.5).

Formerly, much agricultural knowledge was communicated from generation to generation through proverbs. Some of these took the form of predictions based on observations of weather or crop conditions. Others offered advice about how or when land preparation and other operations should be conducted. Others still gave guidance about nutrition. (For examples see Annexe Figure 2.2). But nowadays, with agriculture changing rapidly and many new sources of information becoming available, this medium has become much less important and is no longer regarded as very relevant or significant. This leaves direct observation, learning by doing and specific instruction in particular tasks as the primary means by which knowledge is transmitted. Some children start helping out around the family farm as early as the age of 8 with simple tasks like tending goats, or carrying things to their fathers in the fields (Afiza 6.6), and most have begun to get involved by the age of 10-11, although the amount that they do will differ according to whether they are still at school. Intensive instruction may be given in subjects like vegetable seed management (Najma 5.6), trellis making (Safia 5.5) and post-harvest operations (Mocha 5.7).


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As these examples make clear, gender plays an important part from the outset in determining what is transmitted, although there are no hard and fast boundaries between what boys and girls will learn. One woman informant recalls, for example, working with and learning about land preparation from an elder brother (Najma 5.6). Another, brought up in a small Muslim family with only one male sibling, worked with her father on a variety of tasks that would more normally be regarded as male, like weeding in distant fields and marketing, and it may be that these early experiences helped shape her capacity to innovate as a young adult (Lutfa 6.5). In general, fathers may instruct girls as well as boys, and boys also learn from their mothers. Many children continue to rely upon their parents for advice as they themselves become adult (Mofiz 5.8), although in the case of women, who normally move to their husband’s home para on marriage, such links are less easily maintained (Safia 5.5). At this stage, certain children may also start to collaborate with their parents in experimental activities, and may sometimes actually transfer newly emerging knowledge to the more senior generation (BR29 adoption in Azimuddinshah, 3.4). After marriage young people also begin to share knowledge with their spouses. Increasingly, as women enjoy better opportunities for training, this is becoming a more reciprocal affair (Romeza 5.8, Khadeza 5.9), and one that may extend further to encompass brothers and sisters–in-law (Najma 5.6). But family circumstances may also constrain learning. In a joint household, a new bride may find herself unable to apply what she already knows and blocked from participating in activities that would be new for her, and may have to wait until an independent household can be established before being able to explore her potential (Najma 5.6 cf Safia 5.5). Marriages can also break down, leaving wives to fend for themselves and denying them access to the resources they need to practice agriculture and learn on their own account (Mocha 5.7, Lutfa 6.8). 2.4.2 The wider circle of kin In many instances, a wider circle of kin may play an important part in the learning process, especially in the lowland, predominantly rice producing communities with their strong lineage structures, and most especially of all amongst the members of the dominant founder lineages. The example of BR29 adoption in Azimuddinshah shows various members of an extended family network grappling with, and eventually overcoming, a series of complicated problems that none would have been able to resolve by themselves (3.4). The leading specialists identified in Jabbershah (4.4), nearly all of whom derive from the same lineage, almost appear to be operating an informal extended family division of labour from which all can benefit, and are able to act in concert on the basis of shared information and commonly procured seed to take advantage of the newly arrived swarna amon variety (4.5). Smaller farmers and those with less extensive kin networks are also able to benefit from family connections to a more limited degree, although they are more dependent upon linking these to a wider circle of non-relations (Debesh and Animesh, Annexes 3.3, 3.4). In addition, kin connections extending beyond the para can play an important part in spreading new ideas more rapidly (e.g. Ahmed Ali and the supply of BR28 seedlings to Jalil, Annexe 3.2). Such forms of knowledge transfer cannot operate to anything like the same degree in the poorer and much more socially fragmented upland communities, but are still found to a more limited extent. A small vulnerable farmer (Azizul 5.9) reports, for


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example, how he meets in the evening with a small group of relations and neighbours to discuss agricultural and other matters of mutual concern. 2.4.3 Neighbours and the wider community Neighbours and the wider community take over as a source of knowledge where family networks end, in a process that has already partially been described in the discussion of knowledgeable people and innovators in section 2.3 above. Two broad types of transfer take place here. The first links households of broadly equal status, whilst the second takes the form of downward transmission from the better off to those in inferior economic positions. As far as transfers between equals are concerned, the mechanism may be simple observation. Cases 5.9 and 5.10 show this operating in relation to different types of vegetable cultivation. It may also entail the giving and taking of advice. This will normally take place within, but may also sometimes cross gender boundaries. (Compare Annexes 3.3, 3.4, with Afiza 6.6 advising two male neighbours after having attended an NGO course). A further possibility arises through the types of informal meeting-cum-groupings described above in relation to kin (Azizul 5.9) that can also often involve neighbours. These are more likely to involve men, but women also network informally (Safia, 5.5), and their opportunities to do so are being extended as a result of linkages first established in the context of NGO groups. Romeza (5.8), for example, reports useful exchanges with women whom she first got to know well when she became a member of Shabge. Downward transfers from bigger to smaller farmers have already been discussed in Section 2.2 above and need not be re-visited here. Other variants on this theme are the tenants who are instructed to adopt new inputs or procedures by their landowners, as in the dissemination of BR28 in Azimuddinshah (Annexe 3.2), and the labourers who learn from their employers (Lutfa 6.5). An interesting possibility, which is coming more to the fore with the growing importance of mobile labour groups, concerns the extent to which knowledge might also be transferred upwards, and whether additional rewards might accrue to labour if and when this should occur. In conclusion here, it should be recognised that the way in which these wider community mechanisms operate is highly context specific, and thus subject to considerable variation. We have seen that some varieties, like BR28, prove far less problematic than others, like BR29, and can thus spread far more rapidly from their original source. Where there is a group of better off households who adopt in a co-ordinated fashion (BR28 in Azimuddinshah or Swarna in Jabbershah), their large networks of tenants and contacts serve to disseminate the innovation in question much more rapidly than would otherwise be the case. New ideas can also clearly spread much more quickly where large areas are devoted to the same crop, as is the case with rice in the more lowland communities, than they can where cropping is more differentiated, or where vegetable cultivation, with its far wider variety of species, figures more prominently. Crops and varieties favoured by rich and poor alike will clearly be able to disseminate faster than those, like leafy vegetables, which are more exclusively favoured by the poor (Figure 6.4). More generally, because vegetables tend to be women’s crops and because women network less, new ideas will spread less rapidly and less extensively here. This general structural disadvantage is, however, less pronounced in the more socially fragmented para, where women are more likely to be able to marry inside the community, and hence enjoy a greater stock of social capital in their own right.


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Circumstances can, then, either slow or hasten a process of diffusion within communities. But it should also be recognised that some may simply prevent it from happening in the first place, as with the woman who found herself unable to apply new ideas about vegetable cultivation when an inconsiderate neighbour planted trees that shaded out much of her plot (5.5). 2.5 Learning and the transfer of knowledge from beyond the community Whilst personal “encounters of the horizon” occur regularly within the confines of individual families and para, more significant and profound interactions tend to take place at, or beyond, communal boundaries. The relative importance of these external linkages has grown over time, and they appear likely to become even more significant in future. 2.5.1 People on the move A first and obvious way in which such encounters with non-local knowledge may take place is through people’s temporary and more long-term movements. Our investigations revealed many relevant examples. Some, such as the daughter who moves to Dhaka on marriage, or the son who leaves seasonally to work as a rickshaw puller in the capital, are only indirectly relevant to the process of agricultural learning via the effect they have upon household livelihoods. But others impact far more directly. One set of important movements has involved people coming in from elsewhere. It is reasonable to assume that every community was founded by energetic and ambitious individuals migrating from elsewhere, and bringing with them their ideas and skills from their former homes. Many such migrations would have been over relatively short distances and from locations that perhaps did not differ very greatly. But others, most notably to Chakaldi, entailed relocation from more distant and contrasting environments and almost certainly were associated with new ways of exploiting the new possibilities presented, although what actually happened is too far removed in the past to be re-constructed with any precision. These major initial inwards movements are regularly reproduced on a more modest scale by individual households attaching themselves to established para, although such incomers are normally of a lower economic status, enjoy far less command over resources once they arrive, and are therefore unlikely, under most circumstances, to have a major effect. Largely the same applies in relation to the regular inwards movement of brides under the prevailing patrilocal system of residence. But occasionally, more recent incomers may still exert a significant influence. The most striking example in our research is presented by the tenants coming in from across the river to Hatpara during the early 1990’s and showing how the highest land could be opened up for maize and water melon cultivation (6.3). In a similar fashion, it was the arrival of a migrant from India in the local area that was to trigger the rapid uptake of the swarna amon variety in Jabbershah during the late 1990s (4.5). By and large, however, it is the new ideas established residents themselves bring back into their home communities that appear more significant. To some extent this type of learning takes place as a function of what they are able to observe as they move backwards and forwards in the course of their day-to-day lives. Contacts in adjoining communities may also be important, as seen, for example, in the thresher found nearby that breaks the processing bottleneck with BR29 in Azimuddinshah (3.4). But time after time, visits to local and more distant markets appear especially


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critical in accessing vital new pieces of information and obtaining the seeds and other inputs that represent the first step in the re-creation of external knowledge at the local level. The arrival of BR29 in Azimmuddinshah begins with a conversation held by Ahmed Ali at a tea stall, and the vegetable plot histories contain many examples of ideas first identified through the observation of what was becoming available and selling well in the local area (Kader Miah 5.8, Aziz 5.9). Some people are of course better able to access and act upon information than others. Generally speaking it is the better off who have the time to travel locally and network at markets, as well to attend more occasional events, like salish or Union Parishad meetings, where new ideas may be informally discussed; although the increasing seasonal mobility of labour discussed earlier may be beginning to counter this bias. It is also clear that men enjoy much greater mobility than women, whose access to markets and other public events remains severely constrained. This, however, is less of a problem for poorer women, who are forced by economic circumstance to be more mobile, and who may, as result, be more rapidly exposed to new ideas (Lutfa 6.5). Before moving on, reference should also be made to the role of local dealers in seed, fertiliser and pesticides, who may be contacted through markets, and who on occasions may also visit more locally. Whilst they did not emerge as a significant source of knowledge in our own cases studies, it has elsewhere been suggested that their role can be important. Any advice that they give may, however, be motivated by considerations of short-term commercial self-interest, and has, as such, to be treated with caution. 2.5.2 Government contributions The next way in which new knowledge may be acquired is through government organisations and NGOs. Historically, the government was the major actor in the introduction of new HYV rice and wheat varieties from the 1970s onwards. Its contribution has now been substantially diminished by the progressive privatisation of input supply commencing in the 1980’s, whilst its capacity to advise at the most local level has been severely compromised by the withdrawal of World Bank support from the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), which has resulted in a reduction of approximately 50% in the number of Block Supervisors. But whilst diminished, its position remains significant. It is still the primary producer and initial multiplier of high quality rice seed (3.4), and in the 1990s, following the adoption of the New Agricultural Extension Policy (DAE 1999), it has at least partially succeeded in re-creating itself in a more pro-poor and pro-woman light. Some of our women case study informants reported attending BRDB and DAE vegetable courses (Najma 5.6, Azuzl 5.10) and receiving individual follow up visits at a later stage. Both men and women had received unsolicited advice about particular crops and problems (Liyakat 5.11, Lutfa 6.5), sometimes accompanied by the supply of seeds (Azizul 5.10). Others still had sought and were offered assistance with particular problems, such as pest infestation and appropriate insecticide treatments and doses (5.4). Although by no means always leading to successful outcomes, the help provided by BS appears, in general, to have been valued. And, by comparison with NGOs, who come and go, there is always a BS available reasonably close at hand.


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2.5.3 The contribution of NGOs NGOs have focussed mainly on vegetables and on working with women, with an emphasis on those from poorer households. A number of organisations have been active (5.4). Prior to CARE, the most significant were RDRS and World View, both of which had organised practical training and covered a fairly extensive range of individual crops, varieties and practices. Many of the recommendations made by these organisations have revolved around the need for greater precision in timing, spacing, scale and input quantity, and it would be interesting to see whether such messages have been transmitted more effectively to those who have enjoyed at least a modicum of education. But, unfortunately, this was something we were unable to explore. Organisations have also typically assisted with inputs, especially seeds, in the course of promoting new ideas. There is substantial evidence of the uptake of new ideas coming through this channel, both among men (Azizul 5.9, Liyakat 5.10) and women (Najma 5.6, Romeza wife of Kader Mia 5,8). NGO approaches, to the extent that they bring women together in groups, and have involved residential courses taking them outside of their communities, have also contributed to the sharing of experience, the building of confidence, and the potential for more networking in the post-intervention period. But there are also occasions where lack of resources has constrained those in poorer positions from adopting the ideas that have been promoted (5.4, Safia 5.5, Latifa 6.6). A further limitation is that the dissemination that has occurred has been on a comparatively modest scale (figure 5.5). The relatively small level of vegetable production as a whole, the diversity that exists within it, the differing requirements of individual producers, and the relative difficulty of networking among women all help to explain why this should be so. The types of knowledge disseminated appear to have differed relatively little from one organisation to another (5.4), and it seems likely that there has been a good deal of unnecessary duplication where more than one NGO has functioned in the same community (although Shabge, with its more broadly based and fundamental approach, can probably be absolved from this criticism). Another difficulty derives from the short-term project approach characteristic of such NGO interventions, which among other things precludes the possibility of continuing backup and assistance in adjusting to changing circumstances. A second group of NGOs, like BRAC, ASHA and Grameen, have provided more limited advice about cropping practices when providing credit, sometimes backed up by a demonstration on a selected plot. A number of informants pointed out how this “credit plus” approach can help to overcome some of the adoption constraints arising in relation to the more extension oriented organisations discussed above. Other farmers have been able to use NGO credit secured independent of any technical package to take up new ideas that appeared attractive (Safia 5.5). Such credit based approaches have the additional advantage of forming part of programmes offering much longer term presence and potential support. Perhaps the most outstanding, although also somewhat unusual, example of an NGO contribution lies in the efforts of Grameen Bank to promote sugar production on hitherto largely unutilised land in Hatpara (6.4).


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2.5.4 Education Education may also play a part in bringing new agricultural knowledge to the community. Most children now receive some formal state schooling, although many drop out after a short period. Religious schools and non-formal NGO education provide a viable alternative for some of those not entering the state system, and NGOs also provide opportunities for adult women to acquire basic literacy and numeracy skills. We spent little time in this study considering how all this might affect the capacity to acquire and adapt knowledge of a specifically agricultural nature, but in principle it would appear that such an effect might manifest itself in two ways. The first would be through the direct inclusion of agricultural materials in curricula. But whilst it was evident that there was some coverage of related matters such as nutrition, which are relevant to the interface between agriculture and livelihoods, there was little to suggest that agriculture itself was directly taught. To the extent that education is seen as a passport out of traditional rural livelihoods, there would seem to be little pressure on the demand side to counteract the apparent lack of supply. The second possible effect has already been discussed (Section 2.5.3 above), and concerns the potential of basic literacy and numeracy to facilitate the transfer of the more precise measurement based skills that are a central feature of much of the new ideas promoted by NGOs and government agencies. This requires further investigation. If education were to be found to be assisting in either of the ways indicated, then this, in particular, would open up the possibility of knowledge being transmitted upwards from children to their parents, and laterally between siblings. In addition, the education of girls would assist in the validation and more rapid accumulation and dissemination of women’s knowledge. 2.5.5 Other external sources The media provide another potentially significant source of knowledge. Radio has been available in rural communities for some time and efforts have been made to establish listeners clubs in some locations. Access to television is increasing. Newspapers only feature to a limited extent, but more specialist print materials, in the form of advisory pamphlets or posters, are quite common. Whilst it is clear that these channels are frequently used in the attempt to disseminate knowledge, we were again unable to determine, in the time available, the extent to which they actually succeeded in doing so. Anecdotal and impressionist evidence suggests that men are more able than women, and the better off more able than the poor, to access the opportunities provided, and it is clear that literacy will make a difference in some instances. How all of this works could be considered in a more extensive review. Other sources that appear important in certain instances are employment and access to companies engaged in agricultural activities such as sugar production. Finally, mobile phones are now beginning to appear in substantial numbers in rural communities. Among other things, these hold out the immediate prospect of obtaining up to date information about prices in the markets in which local produce ends up, thus improving the capacity of producers to bargain with traders. With internet connections, a range of further important applications might begin to open up.


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2.6 How learning occurs and how it varies by gender and class 2.6.1 Learning processes As the literature review indicated (Section 1.1), the way in which people learn is not only a function the “encounters of horizon” in which they engage. It also depends on the cognitive structures brought to bear, and the more specific mechanisms individuals employ in the absorption and processing of any new information which may be presented to them. A number of the individual cases reviewed threw some light on this matter and broadly confirmed the conclusions offered by Sumberg and Okali. Experiments were generally adaptive in nature, and most commonly involved side-by-side comparisons rather than trials extending over more than one year or season. Trial and error was employed in the case of selecting appropriate chemical inputs and dosages. New varieties were compared with old and on different types of land. The performance of seeds of the same variety but from different sources was assessed (BR29, 3.4). Such experiments, especially where they involved new varieties, were mainly the preserve of the leading males in a community, but all types of farmer were found to experiment on a modest scale, including those from more humble backgrounds (Kader Miah 5.8, Liyakat 5.10) and women (5.4, Najma 5.6, Afiza 6.6). Experiments were more commonly undertaken with cash than with subsistence crops and seemed particularly common with vegetables. Variations in learning opportunities and processes by social class and gender have been discussed in relation to each of the individual topics already explored in this section, but before proceeding, it will be useful to take more consolidated stock of the main points arising in either instance. 2.6.2 The effect of class With regard to class, we have seen that surplus farmers are much more likely to be innovators than their poorer counterparts, and that certain communities have much stronger cores of leader/innovators than others. Poorer households have less resources with which to innovate, and are less able to take risks. They also have less extensively developed external networks, generally lower mobility, less education and poorer media exposure: all of which constrain their access to new ideas. Sometimes they may be forced to follow the decisions of the rich even if it is not in their ideal interests to do so. On occasions, they may suffer from innovations suiting the rich, for example through loss of employment opportunities. Where pursuing crop preferences that differ from those of the better off, poorer farmers are more inclined to innovate in their own right. Tenants, by contrast, tend to receive instructions from land-owners about the uptake of new ideas. The same normally applies to landless labourers, although with the emergence of mobile labour groups, some scope for reverse flows of knowledge may now be emerging. A final and fundamental point here is that economic position is far from static. Examples have been encountered of marked upwards mobility (Ishak 4.7), marked downward movement (Mocha Kulsum Begom 5.8) and marked decline followed by significant recovery (Lutfa 6.5). From this it follows that individual access to learning opportunities, including whether or not one is targeted by different external agencies, may vary through time.


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2.6.3 Gender variations With regard to gender, it has been established that men and women have their separate areas of responsibility and expertise, and that this is reflected in what they learn about as children. There are, however, significant areas of overlap, and these may become quite substantial, and afford women a wider range of opportunities, under some family circumstances. After they marry, women generally have more access to resources and capacity to explore new ideas in nuclear than in joint family structures. At the same time, those marrying inside their home communities enjoy greater social capital in the form of retained links with parents and male siblings, and hence more opportunities to network and learn, than those who follow the more normal path of moving to their husband’s para. Because women have much more limited access to resources, it is more difficult for them to experiment than men, and this is re-enforced by their greater likelihood to be engaged in subsistence activities, where much less experimentation tends to take place than in the commercial sector. At the same time, their generally lower mobility and the constraint on visiting markets make it harder for them to access new knowledge in the first place. Changes in official extension policy and the pro-woman emphasis of NGO have, however, served to some extent to counteract these biases. By giving women knowledge that their husbands lack and which can be passed on to them, this, in turn, has sometimes contributed to the creation of a more equal marriage relationship. At the same time, training activities and the groups formed in connection with extension activities for women can provide new opportunities for networking and building social capital. Women, however, still have less social capital than men, and this helps to explain why innovations with which they are associated tend to reach smaller numbers of new producers than those moving through male channels. 2.7 Supporting poor people’s livelihoods It is not the business of this paper to explore, in any detail, what lessons CARE might draw for its forthcoming livelihood campuses, with their particular focus on supporting the livelihood strategies of poor women and men. This is a separate exercise that, as well as looking at the present study, will also depend on the analysis coming from ongoing work on gender and on Farmer Field Schools. A few preliminary thoughts are, however, in order. The first, and most obvious, is that it will always be relatively hard for an agriculturally based approach to reach and significantly benefit very poor households with little or no access to land. Similarly, the agriculture route may not be the most promising way of supporting the endeavours of poorer women, given that they tend only to perform a subsidiary role in relation to major crops, and that vegetable cultivation, which they dominate, takes place only on relatively small areas of land. The picture changes somewhat if livestock is also taken into account, but this has not been considered in the present exercise. Much, however, will depend upon precisely who is to be regarded as poor and who is not. As already noted (2.6.2) it is also critically important to recognise that who is poor today only gives the most approximate sense of who might be “tomorrow’s poor”. Our study has added to the already large body of evidence regarding the severe vulnerability of many current owners and operators of land to the descent into landlessness. As some of our case studies show, the illness or death of a key family member, or a major crop lost through flood or disrupted irrigation supply, is often all that is required. People who may have been excluded from FFS because they were


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“too rich”, might, if included, have learned something that would have improved their diet and their resistance to disease. Or they might have earned a little more money and acquired an asset that could then be disposed of to deal with a livelihoods shock, without the need to liquidate the basic land resource. But even if today’s poor, and especially today’s poor women, are to remain the focus, our study suggests that there are a number of possibilities within the agricultural sphere that might still profitably be explored. In the first place, the scope of erstwhile FFS could be extended to provide more opportunities for the marginal and to include the landless.

• Specific crops and innovations, relevant only or primarily to the poor, could be identified and poorer people provided with opportunities to network and learn from each other around them.

• Separate schools might be offered to labour groups where knowledge drawn from wider geographical areas would be pooled and evaluated for its local relevance. Plans might then be developed for negotiating enhanced contracts with landowners where it could be demonstrated that new skills could deliver extra value through the labour process.

• Gifted landless and marginal men and women might be brought together into cadres of “barefoot extensionists” who would then either be employed by CARE or deliver services for direct payment to different types of farmer.

• Women’s traditional roles as storers and multipliers of quality seed might be enhanced and turned into a more commercial activity through technical training and business support.

Local partnerships, of the type already promoted by the recent DAE Agricultural Services Innovation Reform Project, might be formed locally with government and non-government agencies and developed in a number of ways.

• Duplication of effort between different agencies, of the type noted in NGO vegetable promotion, could be reduced, and mutual learning could be promoted.

• More systematic links to credit providers could be formed to improve access by poorer landowners to currently promoted technologies.

• The expertise of organisations like BRAC in poultry and other forms of livestock production could be tapped and might specifically be used to promote barefoot vetenarians, feed suppliers and egg buyers.

• The experience of Proshika, BRAC and others might be used to further strengthen existing initiatives around common land resources such as roadsides, where the landless can grow trees.

• These might include mulberry that, in turn, could provide a starting point for a sericulture initiative.

Further options may exist to extend access by the marginal and landless to productive resources.

• Tenants with particular skills could be supported in efforts to secure more favourable and longer-term leases.

• Landless groups might be supported in attempts to lease land and engage in seedbed management and commercial seedling supply.

• At a more ambitious level, poor men and women might establish commercial nurseries to supply saplings and seedlings along the lines of past and


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ongoing initiatives by organisations like Helen Keller International and Proshika. Such an initiative might be linked to the seed supply business mentioned above.

• More ambitious still might be efforts to build on existing initiatives to collectively access and utilise khas land and water resources, or small bilani zamin. This might be explored in conjunction with Samata or Nijera Kori, both of whom are current DFID partners.

Finally, attempts might be made to extend commercial and learning opportunities in other ways.

• Experiments could be conducted to establish local sub-markets that might be easier and more comfortable for women to reach, and offer them better access to commercial information.

• Extending mobile phone and internet access might offer an alternative or complementary route to the same end.

• Building on experiments already taking place elsewhere in CARE, links might be formed with formal and non-formal educational institutions to develop more effective mechanisms for the absorption and transmission of agricultural knowledge.

These suggestions are some of the more obvious possibilities arising from the study and the recent experiences of RLP. A more comprehensive list could be prepared by exploring more widely at the national and international level. This is one of a number of possibilities that might now be considered.


22

3. AZIMUDDINSHAH 3.1 Location and resources Azimuddinshah para lies a few kilometres to the east of the tarmac road that runs through the centre of Chiribanda Union, and is approached by a series of mud tracks elevated a metre or two above the surrounding fields1. The community is entered by a single track from the east that continues for some 400 metres before reaching a junction from which one branch runs off to the south and another to the north. The visitor first passes a small Khatria caste Hindu settlement that lies immediately to the south of the undivided track, before arriving at slightly larger and more prosperous cluster of Muslim houses surrounding the junction and extending a small distance away to the west. With virtually all of the higher land in this central area now occupied, a smaller cluster of Muslim homes has also been established a short distance further to the north, close to the point where the track turns once again to the west and leaves the community. The higher land where the houses have been built and the adjoining areas are interspersed with a number of ponds and together accounts for perhaps 20% of the total land area. The soil here is mainly sandy loam. Immediately beyond is an expanse of lower silty loam, covering a further 55%. The picture is completed by a smaller area of medium land with sandy loam soil to the north, which accounts for the remaining 25%. (For further details of crops and rotation, see Figure 3.1) The para has a mosque, a Hindu temple, and a church that serves a small number of former Hindus who have converted to Christianity. There is also a madrassa in the Muslim quarter and a BRAC primary school in the Hindu area. 3.2 Kinship and class The wealthiest individuals are two Muslim brothers, Azim and Aziz, who between them own 100 acres. As Azim has aged, Aziz has emerged as the dominant force, working in conjunction with his two sons, one of whom has been selected as male leader of the CARE farmer field school. Azim and Aziz are grandsons of Piru, who first settled the area some fifty years ago and founded a dominant lineage. This has now both subdivided and incorporated other smaller units through marriage, and currently comprises three sections, with a total of 32 households (see Figure 3.2, Lineage 1). When Piru first came to the area, he was accompanied by a distant cousin, who started Lineage 2. The Muslim picture is completed by a grouping of seven mainly poor households, all of whom are descended from individuals who attached themselves to the community some time after it was founded (Group 3 on Figure 3.2). We were able to find out less about the history of the Hindus, but it appears that they have actually been resident in the area for longer. Despite this, the present structure of kinship relations is somewhat simpler, with two major lineages connected by marriage. The largest, which was founded by an individual named Bocha, dominates this part of the community and currently comprises 18 households. Among their number are three brothers who control most of the land. One of these, Bhabesh, has assumed the role of leadership, whilst his wife has become the woman leader under the CARE FFS. The second lineage appears to have been established at about the 1 This community was previously studied as part of our investigation into social capital. See CARE 2003.


23

Figure 3.1; Azimuddinshah. Land types and current cropping patterns

Poy

sh

Mag

h

Falg

un

Cha

ittra

Boi

shak

Jais

tha

Ash

at

Shr

abon

Bha

ddra

Ash

in

Kar

tik

Agr

ahay

n

Predominant* Land height

and soil type

% o

f are

a

D Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov D

A

High Sandy loam 10

Annual vegetables

B

High Sandy loam 10

Winter vegetables

Summer vegetables

Winter

vegetables

C Medium Sand loam 5 Wheat Summer vegetables Wheat

D Medium Sand loam 20 Wheat T.Amon Wheat

E Low Loam Silty loam 55* Boro T.Amon

Rainfall


* Includes 5% where land height is medium and soil is loamy same time, and accounts for a further 13 mainly poorer households. The third lineage, which traces its ancestry in the community back only two generations, comprises only four households. A small number of the poorest households, scattered across the different lineages, have converted to Christianity.

In all, there are 77 households of which more than half are Muslim, a third Hindu and 12% Christian (see Figure 3.3). The Muslims are predominantly small farmers, operating between 0.5 and 2.5 acres; but there are also substantial big and medium farmer minorities, operating more than 7.5 acres and from 2.5 – 7.5 acres respectively, and smaller numbers of marginal and landless households, with 0.05 – 0.5 and less than 0.05 acres respectively. The Hindus as a whole are much poorer, with a clear majority of marginal and landless and far fewer small households, but only a slightly lower proportion of big and medium farm households. 3.3 Agricultural development When the first settlers arrived, the land was mainly jungle and bush (see Annexe Figure 3.1). As it was cleared, a small amount of vegetable cultivation began in areas immediately adjoining the bari, bamboo was planted on some of the other higher


24

Figure 3.2: Azimuddinshah: lineage, class and FFS membership by household

4 Generation lineage with 13 members linked to two smaller lineages by marriage

4 generation lineage with 13 households linked to two smaller lineages by marriage

3 generation lineage with 5 households in chain with 4 smaller lineages linked by marriage

Household with 4 daughters linked by marriage to 3 other small lineages

2 small lineages linked by marriage and 8 other unconnected lineages varying in size from 1 – 7 households

E

B

B

D E

E

E

C

C C

C C

C

C

B

B

C

C C

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

B

A

B

D

D

D

D

D

E

E

E

E

E

E E

E

E

E

E

E E

E E

B C

B

B

C

B

B

C

E

C

D

D

D

D D

E E C C C E E

B C D E E C D

A Big

Medium Marginal

Small Landless

Care member

Linked by marriage


25

land, whilst surrounding areas were used to grow local transplanted amon, sometimes preceded by a broadcast aus crop. This pattern continued as the population grew through the later colonial and Pakistan periods.

Figure 3.3 Households by class and religious group Category Big Middle Small Marginal Landless Total %Acres operated >7.5 2.5 - 7.5 0.5 - 2.49 0.05- 0.5 <0.05 Muslim 4 5 25 2 5 41 53Hindu 2 3 5 8 9 27 35Christian 2 4 3 9 12Total 6 8 32 14 17 77 100 Percentages Muslim 10 12 61 5 12 100 Hindu 7 11 19 30 33 100 Christian 22 44 33 100 Total 8 10 42 18 22 100

Following independence in 1971, modern varieties started to be introduced. With the widespread availability of STWs from the 1980s onwards, winter HYV wheat and boro rice began to squeeze out the aus crop, and local amon varieties were also increasingly displaced by modern alternatives. The 1980s and 1990s saw the arrival of NGOs and the limited promotion of vegetable cultivation, with production becoming more extensive and diversified following the recent input by CARE and the improved access to urban markets following the opening of the Jamuna bridge. During this period there were also a number of changes in the particular varieties of paddy grown, culminating in the displacement of BR16 by BR29 and of China by BR28. It is the stories of these changes that lie at the heart of the account that follows. 3.4 How the BR29 rice variety spread in Azimuddinshah 3.4.1 Background BR29 is an HYV boro rice crop that was released in 1996. The first person to grow it in Azumuddinshah was Ahmed Ali. Although technically only a middle farmer, with 2.5 acres of land, Ali has outside business interests and powerful family connections, and ranked 7 in well-being in the para. He is nephew of the largest land owner, and his father, Azizar Rahman, is the second largest land owner. His brother Aminul is also a large farmer, as well as being the leader of the CARE FFS. The land on which the crop was grown was medium high and had earlier been cultivated with BR16. This had proved unsatisfactory in certain respects. The price commanded was relatively low. In addition, the grain was subject to chaffing (not being filled), was of irregular size, and did not lend itself well to chira (chaffed rice) production. Ali was on the lookout for an alternative.


26

3.4.2 Initial experiences and difficulties One day, whilst having tea at a stall in Chirirbanda market, he fell into conversation with somebody who told him about the new variety. This was said to be suitable for his type of land and to offer potentially high yields. Seeds were available at the BADC store in Parbatipur some 20 kms away, which Ali had already used on earlier occasions, and he decided to try it out in the season beginning early in 2000. He purchased two ten kilogram (kg) bags of seed at BDT 180 a bag and was initially very pleased with the results. The crop in the field appeared healthy and produced grains of a good uniform size. The total yield of 40 maunds per bigha (0.48 acres) was well above that being achieved with other varieties. Problems, however, began when he came to harvest. The strong, erect plants were harder to cut than other varieties, additional labour had to be hired, and the operation cost BDT 50 more than usual. Next, it was discovered that the grains were very firmly attached to the stems, making it extremely difficult to thresh by the normal manual methods, and additional labour again had to be taken on. Finally, following an extended search, a threshing machine was located in a nearby para and hired. This got the job done, but with BDT 50 a day again added to costs. A further set back was encountered when the new variety proved relatively unpopular with consumers, initially only attracting a price of BDT 550 for a 75 kg bag, which was BDT 50 less than could normally be expected. 3.4.3 Finding a way forward Because of these difficulties, Ali did not to continue with BR29 in 2001. Aware of his negative experiences, nobody else grew it either. In 2002, however, Ali’s father Azizer decided to give it another try on land near to his home, where he had been experiencing problems. The plot adjoined the road and was affected by shade. He had been cultivating BR16 and like other farmers had experienced trouble with lodging. Ducks frequently grazed on the crop. The experiment proved to be a success, with a yield of 45 maunds per bigha, which more than compensated for the harvest and post-harvest problems. Unfortunately, however, the rains came soon after the harvest, making it impossible to dry the grain sufficiently to retain as seed. Some of the crop was consumed and the remainder sold. This meant that there was no seed to repeat the crop in 2003. But during the year, Ali’s brother Aminul purchased a new threshing machine for BDT 2500 from Brindaban market. This was initially used in the amon season and then for the wheat crop that followed and proved a very good investment. After using it himself, Aminul rented it out to others for a total of 30 days at a daily rate of BDT 50, and recovered most of his outlay in less than a year. Having seen the yields that could be achieved and with the threshing problem now solved, both brothers decided to cultivate BR29 in 2004. Aminul purchased 10 kg of seed from BADC at BDT 18 per kg and planted 3.5 bighas, whilst Ali bought his from a man called Habib who lived in nearby Pathanpara, at the cheaper price of BDT 12 per kg., and cultivated 43 bighas. In the same season, a distant relation from another part of the para decided to try out the new crop on a 1 bigha plot, using seedlings purchased from Ali. Finding that he had insufficient seedlings of his own, Aminul also obtained some from Ali, and transplanted them on a separate part of the plot so that their vitality could be compared with the BADC seed. In the meantime, other people had come to appreciate the value of the new machines, and by the beginning of 2004, there were three or four in the para. This


27

had reduced the cost of threshing considerably, thus narrowing the disadvantage previously experienced with BR29 by comparison with other crops2. At the same time, the variety has been gaining acceptability in local markets, with the price increasing by BDT 10-20 per 75 kg bag and now only lagging BDT 30-40 behind BR16. The benefit to the better off farmers able to cultivate the crop and use the new post harvest technology has therefore been considerable. But set against this there has been a reduction in employment opportunities for labourers drawn from the poorer classes in the area, some of whom will probably now have to seek work elsewhere. 3.5 How the BR28 variety spread in Azimuddin Shah 3.5.1 The comparison with other crops Ahmed Ali was also responsible for introducing BR28 into the para, and started in 2000, the same year as his first attempts to cultivate BR29 (see previous case). But the story here is very different and provides some interesting contrasts. The land on which BR28 was first grown had previously been used to cultivate a China boro crop, but this had been associated with a number of problems. The variety was disease prone, required a relatively large amount of fertiliser and had a tendency to shatter (i.e. for grain to fall from the plant) during harvesting and transportation. BR28 represented a marked improvement on each of these counts and had the additional advantage that all panicles sprouted at the same time. The variety also compared very favourably with BR29 in certain respects. It was of shorter duration, and therefore required less irrigation and was less susceptible to late season pest attack. It was much easier to harvest and could be threshed manually without any difficulty. It also commanded a rather higher price. But set against all of these advantages was a much lower yield of 25-28 as opposed to 40 maunds/bigha. 3.5.2 Dissemination paths But because BR28 was superior to China and avoided the initial constraints associated with BR29, it was to spread much more rapidly. Annexe Figure 3.2 shows how, from a situation where Ali was the sole cultivator in the first year, as many as 20 new users, all of whom relied on directly on him as a supplier, were able to adopt in 2001. These were drawn from all cultivating classes. The better off took seeds, whilst the slightly poorer, who typically lacked sufficient land and time to attend to the various cultural operations, were more likely to go for seedlings. Ali exchanged 75 kg of seed with his father Azizur in return for a similar quantity of BR16. Azizur then retained a portion for use on land being cultivated directly under his own supervision, and distributed the remainder, 5 kg at a time to two of his sharecroppers and a handful of other farmers who had taken land from him under other tenancy arrangements. A further 100 kg were supplied on credit. 40 kg went

2 Comprehensive information could not be collected in the time available. The following fragments of data do, however, provide a partial picture: a) with previous varieties, 4 labourers at a cost of BDT 600, were generally required to harvest and thresh I bigha ; b) prior to the arrival of the machine, BR29, by contrast, required 8-9 labourers; c) the threshing operation took 4-5 labourers 1 day before the machine was introduced; d) with the machine, 2 labourers could do all of the threshing in one hour.


28

to one of the leading Hindus in the para, whilst a distant relation and two unrelated Muslim farmers, one of whom lived outside the para, received 20 kg each. Some of the seedlings were given away to another leading Hindu and a brother-in-law from another para. The remainder were sold, mainly to farmers who were also from other para. We were unable to trace the story beyond 2001, but it would clearly be interesting to see how the subsequent popularity of BR28 might have been affected by the emergence of BR29 as a more viable alternative in the years that followed. 3.6 How a marginal farmer is constrained from cultivating a high return boro variety Birendra Nath Roy lives in the Hindu section of Azimuddin Shah. He has a wife and three sons, who range in age from 1-9. He is a marginal farmer with only 12.5 decimals of land on which he grows amon and boro rice, but this is only sufficient to feed his family for between one and two months a year, depending on which varieties are cultivated. The household has to depend mainly on his work as a manual labourer in and around the para. This small case illustrates how in the last year, circumstances conspired to prevent Birendra from cultivating a BR16 boro crop that would have enabled him to maximise production, forcing him instead to settle for the less productive variety. BR16 is a long duration crop and therefore has to be planted relatively early. Birendra had grown it in the past but he had no seedbed of his own. Last boro, he found that seedlings were hard to come by and that the price was unusually high. During that period, there was plenty of work doing transplanting and he decided to take this rather than spend the time trying to make arrangements for the seedling and risk the earnings that would have been lost. In principle, it would have been possible for him to have transplanted a little later than everybody else, but in practise this was ruled out by two considerations. Firstly, there was a danger that the pump would have been removed from the area while his crop still required irrigation because nobody else would need it. Secondly, if his crop was left standing in the field after everybody else had harvested, it would inevitably attract all the insects, grazing animals and birds from the surrounding area. It would also be difficult to guard and there would be a risk from early hailstorms. He therefore opted to go for the shorter duration China variety since this could be transplanted after the period of peak labour demand had passed but still be harvested at the same time as the main BR16 crop. Accordingly, he purchased some fairly old seedlings with some of the cash he had earned, borrowed a plough and bullock from neighbours on credit, and took a loan from a local dealer to buy fertiliser. Two lots of bananas were then sold to raise the cash to purchase the diesel required to run the irrigation pump. He was eventually able to harvest his crop, but the proceeds were only sufficient for his family to live off for a month. 3.7 Further materials Some additional materials were collected in the para that are more or less self-explanatory. Figure 3.4 below shows the multiple criteria used by farmers in a neighbouring para, and complements the accounts provided above by illustrating something of the complexity of the decision making involved.


29

Annexe Figures 3.3 and 3.4 lay out two actor-centred networks for the exchange of different types of knowledge, showing how relations between, kin, neighbours, and individuals with more single-stranded economic relations may all be activated at different times and for different purposes. Figure 3.4: Preference ranking of amon rice varieties by farmers in Hanifsah and Hangasha para (close to Azimuddinshah)

Variety

Criteria S

war

na

BR

11

Pai

jam

Kat

rhar

ivog

Bad

shav

og

Sapa

har

Kal

izira

Greater coverage 7 7 6 4 3 2 2

High yield 7 6 4 2 2 3 1

Low pest infestation 1 2 7 8 8 7 8

Low lodging 7 6 1 1 1 1 1

Early maturing 6 5 7 1 2 4 1

Tasty 5 4 6 6 7 1 5

Good for chaffed rice (chira) 4 5 6 7

Good for puffed rice (muri) 6 7 5

Low input cost 3 2 6 5 7 5 5

Good market price 4 3 5 6 7 2 6

High market demand 7 6 7 5 5 2 3

Good price for straw 3 4 7 6 6 6 6

Varieties are listed with those having the greatest coverage (and hence presumably the greatest popularity) on the left and those with the lowest coverage on the right. Shaded columns are HYVs. All others are local varieties. Bold figures show the highest performance again each criterion


30

4. JABBERSHAH 4.1 Location and resources Jabbershah lies two to three kilometres to the west of the main road through Chiribanda union and is approached by a narrow kacca road3. Nearby, a new and rather larger road is currently under construction by a CARE supported project, which when completed will significantly improve local communications. Entering the para, a large rice mill lies immediately next to the road, with a two story house to one side and a small mosque – one of three built by members of the wealthier households – immediately to the other. There are several large ponds and a power line runs nearby which provides the energy source for a number of shallow tubewells, and to which several households already have connections. The main part of the para occupies a higher area of land that extends back two or three hundred metres at right angles from the road. Moving to the interior, the houses become smaller and are crowded together on less spacious plots of land. Three more minor clusters of homesteads have been established as smaller satellite para within a radius of 100-200 metres. One of these is very closely connected to the Muslim para itself, and was therefore included in our investigation. The para’s agricultural land, which totals 134 acres, stretches in a large semi-circle around the residential area. The larger portion is low to medium with loam soils, whilst towards the borders there are smaller areas of medium to high land with loam and silty sand soils. The western boundary is formed by the Kakra river. (For more details of land types and cropping patterns see Figure 4.1). 4.2 Kinship and class All 57 households are Muslim. The seven households in the satellite para form their own lineage, and within the main para area there are a further eight households who also belong to small lineages of their own. The remaining 42 households all form part of a large lineage that divides into three sub-lineages (1,2,3) (see Figure 4.2). The first of these, which includes the majority of households, then sub-divides into a further three units (1.1,1.2,1.3). Two big farm households are found in the satellite para, and one in lineage 3, but the remaining five are all clustered together in 1.1, and form the dominant power block within the para. All are directly linked to Jabber, an old man of 90, after whom the para is now named. There is an inner circle comprising three individuals. Wazed is Jabber’s nephew, and owns about 10 acres of land and a rice mill. He sits on the salish, plays an influential role in formulating its decisions, and is often approached for more informal advice by local residents. Lutfar is the first of Jabber’s sons, and the richest person in the para, with a substantial area of land and his own rice mill. He plays a more minor role than Aziz on the salish. Hasan is Lutfar’s brother and a former Union Council member. The key role played by these individuals is discussed in Section 4.4 below. Land is very unevenly distributed, with the eight big farm households accounting for more than 60% of all holdings. At the other extreme there are 18 landless

3 This community was previously studied as part of our overview of institutions in the north-west. See CARE 2002 pp. 60-64.


31

Figure 4.1; Jabbershah. Land types and current cropping patterns

Poy

sh

Mag

h

Falg

un

Cha

ittra

Boi

shak

Jais

tha

Ash

at

Shr

abon

Bha

ddra

Ash

in

Kar

tik

Agr

ahay

n

Predominant* Land height

and soil type

% o

f are

a


A

Homestead and pond 8

Fruit trees

B

High Loam and silt sand

4

Bamboo

C

High Loam 5

Winter vegetables

Summer vegetables

Winter

Vegetables

D Low Loam 83 Boro T.Amon

Rainfall


*Variations on dominant patterns

Crop (% of area)

Height Soil type % of total area

Trees (8) High 8

Silt sand 2

Bamboo (4)

High Loam 2

Loam 3

Vegetables (6)

High Silt sand 2

High Silt sand 1

Medium Loam 15

Medium Sandy loam 4

Low Loam 60

Boro, T.Amon (83)

Low Sand loam 3


32

Figure 4.2: Jabbershah: lineage, class and FFS membership by household

C

B

E

D

A Big

Medium Marginal

Small Landless

Care member

Original settler

1.2 1.1 1.3

2.

3.

Others

A

A A

A

A A

B

B B B BBB

B

B

B

C

C

CC C C C

CCCC

C C

C

C C

D

D

E

EE

E E E E

E

E EEE

E E

E E


33

households, who by themselves comprise almost a third of the total. The picture is completed by 10 medium, 18 small and 3 marginal households (see Figure 4.3).

Figure 4.3: Households and Population by BBS Land Operating Categories

BBS category Big Medium Small Marginal Landless TotalAcres operated >7.5 2.51 - 7.5 0.5 - 2.5 0.05 - 0.49 <0.05 No. of households 8 10 18 3 18 57% 14 18 32 5 32 100

4.3 Agricultural development We were unable to determine precisely when the community was established, but the fact that the dominant lineage goes back seven generations suggests that this probably took place some time late in the nineteenth century. As the land was cleared and settled, bamboo and fruit trees were grown on the higher area, which accounted for some 18% of the para land, whilst local amon was cultivated in rotation with aus on about 55% of the area and black gram on the remaining 27% (see Annexe Figure 4.1). As in Azimuddinshah, the 1980s saw the first arrival of HYVs, with China being cultivated initially and Atom then also becoming popular. Within a few years, aus and gram had been almost entirely displaced, and boro/t.amon had been established as the dominant rotation, covering more than 80% of the total area. Later in the decade, the volume of production was sufficient to encourage two of the leading households to establish their rice mills. At the same time, the increased demand for labour led to the formation of the first labour groups, and to the seasonal migration of labour to Bogra and other districts, where the green revolution had taken hold earlier (see Section 4.6 below).

In the following decade, BR16 took over as the main boro variety, before itself starting to be displaced by BR29 in the years since 2000. The 1990s were also the time when HYV amon varieties started to appear, with BR11 leading the way and swarna taking over towards the end of the decade (see Section 4.5 below). But unlike their boro counterparts, these did not entirely displace their traditional predecessors. Section 4.7 below traces the succession of boro and amon varieties cultivated by one farmer on a single plot since the early 1980s, and explores the factors governing the selection of varieties at different points in time. During the 1990s, Caritas and Come to Work became the first NGOs to work in the community, but their influence on agriculture was only slight. CARE arrived more recently and among other things has helped to accelerate the substitution of bamboos by vegetables on a part of the higher land. (For a summary of key historical developments in the para, see Annexe Figure 4.1). 4.4 Innovators and early adopters A group of farmers from the para were asked to name and prioritise their key sources of information about new crops and farming practices. Their responses are summarised in Figure 4.3.


34

In all, a total of nine individuals were mentioned. Of these, only the CARE FT and the BS came from outside the para, and the BS, who had made a significant contribution some years ago, but had not recently been seen, was ranked lowest. The most important key internal sources were drawn from a group of big and medium farmers from the same sub-lineage, each of whom was regarded as expert in a particular aspect of rice cultivation. One would be consulted about varietal selection and fertiliser application, another about pesticides and herbicides and a third about market conditions. Figure 4.3: Key sources of knowledge in Jabbershah para in order of significance given by farmers

Name/relations Class* Expertise

1= Lutfar Shah (brother of Hasan cousin of Wazed)

A (1) In regular contact with BS 3-4 years ago. Acquired information on modern rice varieties & fertiliser application that he passes on to others. First to adopt BR29

1= CARE FTs N/A Rice fish, non-chemical pest control, vegetable dike cropping

3 Hasan Ali (bother of Lutfar cousin of Wazed)

A (7) Advice sought on all aspects of rice and other cultivation, but especially recognised for knowledge of pesticides and herbicides

4 Wazed Ali (cousin of Lutfar and Hasan)

A (2) Rice mill/chatal owner. Advises on market conditions and when it will/will not be good to sell. Also an expert on animal husbandry and poultry

5 Afser B (9)? Fertiliser dealer who provides information on new crops

6= Rashid ? Fish expert

6= Toferuddin ? Expert on vegetable cultivation and grows throughout the year. First to cultivate the new Onamika variety of okra.

6= Mohasin Ali C (22) Considered most innovative farmer in area. Pioneered cultivation of Bogra variety of green chilli, banana and lichi.

9 Block Supervisor Na Has not visited recently. Formerly provided advice on rice varieties and fertiliser applications.

* Based on five BBS categories. Figure in brackets shows well-being ranking There was, however, also a secondary group comprising individuals with particular knowledge of activities like fish culture and vegetable production which were of less overall importance in the community. Interestingly, these included representatives


35

from lower economic strata, one of whom was actually recognised as the most innovative and knowledgeable farmer in the community, despite only having a small holding of relatively infertile higher land 4.5 Diffusion of new rice varieties in Jabbershah 4.5.1 Problems with BR11 By 1998, BR11 had been cultivated for several years as an amon crop in Jabbarshah and had become by far the most important variety, accounting for approximately two thirds of the total area. Average yields were about 17 maunds/ bigha. Farmers were, however, well aware that it was always possible for an individual crop to fail in a particular season and, where possible, would therefore try to cultivate a second variety as insurance. At this time, a number of local varieties, including kolom, malshia, sapahar, beto, kolodama, konekshur, and katari performed this function, between them covering most of the remaining third of the area. Average yields were a little lower than BR11 at 14-15 maunds/ bigha. That year proved a particularly bad one for BR11. With its relatively long stem, it was already recognised to be prone to lodging and the unusually high winds encountered in Ashin (September/October) led to extensive damage. An already bad situation was then made worse by an infestation of Brown plant hopper (BPH), and average yields fell to between 5 and 7 maunds/bigha. A further disadvantage of the variety was that it tended to get foot rot if the water dried out at the late reproductive stage. 4.5.2 The arrival and dissemination of swarna At around the same time, a man had come from India to settle with relations in a nearby community, bringing a new variety of rice with him. This was known as swarna, but was originally passed off and traded as if it were another Indian variety called paizam, which it resembled and with which people were already familiar. Swarna quickly proved to be successful in local conditions. With its shorter stem and BPH resistance, it was unaffected by the adverse conditions encountered in 1998, and performed especially well, achieving yields in the range of 26-28 maunds/bigha. The wealthier members of the dominant gushti in the para – Lutfar Shah, Wazed Ali, Rajjak Ali, Hasan Ali, Yusuf Ali, Yasin Ali, Al-Haj Khabiz Uddin and Ibrahim – quickly learned of this success. With the recent failure of BR11 fresh in their minds, they all resolved to try swarna for themselves in the following season. Seed was obtained from Chordanga bazaar, close to where the migrant from India had settled, and results were very encouraging. Although the variety required 10 kg of urea less per bigha than BR11, yields of 22-23 maunds/bigha were obtained, and a similar price was obtained in the market. By 2000, many others had followed suit, with each original cultivator selling seed to perhaps 7-8 new adopters. As a result, swarna overtook BR11 as the most important variety, accounting for more than half of the total area in the para. Average yields, however, fell a little to around 20 maunds/bigha, whilst those who had continued with BR11 were able to obtain 16-18 maunds. In part, at least, this could be attributed to the relatively early onset of the rains, which led people to cut back on their normal levels of fertiliser application for fear that it would be washed out and lost. In 2001, however, BR11 suffered another attack of BPH and swarna made further gains, eventually rising, at its peak, to about 75% of the total area. By this point it


36

had moved further ahead of BR11 in profitability, commanding a premium of BDT 20 per sack, whilst still requiring 5 kg less urea per bigha. But not all was well with the new variety. It had been found to grow well in the relatively higher areas where water did not accumulate at the late reproductive stage, but like BR11 had proved vulnerable to foot rot where soil dried at the late reproductive stage. People were also aware that varieties can often lose their vitality and fail after 5-7 years, and most continued to farm some land under an alternative. These suspicions appear to have been well-founded, with average swarna yields dropping to their lowest level of 16-18 maunds/bigha in 2003. 4.6 Labour groups operating in and around para Recent years have seen an increase in the incidence of agricultural work performed by labour operating in groups that negotiate an overall rate for a job (kamla), and a corresponding decline in the relative importance of labour hired directly by land owners and operators to perform specific tasks (pait). 4.6.1 Leaders and members Interviews were conducted with the leaders of two such groups. • Abdus Samad came to Kushumpur village and was 45 years old. He had first

formed his group 25 years ago, starting out with three other labourers who still remained with him today. Others had joined and left in the ensuing period with the size fluctuating between six and ten over time. Currently there were six members, all of whom were landless.

• Pradip had established his group five years ago. There were currently ten

members, drawn from the para of Haridas and Tulsisah in the same village. Pradip and seven others fell into the marginal farmer category, whilst the other two were landless. Members spend a little time operating their own land and may also sometimes sell their labour individually.

The group leaders took responsibility for making initial contacts with employers, planning and implementing the work agreed, collecting payments and distributing individual wages. Individual members were ideally expected to exhibit more than usual levels of skill and to be of good reputation. 4.6.2 Work and payment The tasks undertaken would typically include: rice transplanting, harvesting, labouring in rice mills (chatal) and earth cutting. Wage rates for harvesting and threshing operations were typically BDT 300 per bigha (0.48 decimals) for the pari variety and BDT 500 – 700 for Atom, but could rise as high as BDT 1,000 when the rains came early. Transplanting typically also commanded BDT 300 per bigha. The owner would determine the gap between plants and rows. Abdus’ group of six could normally manage 1 – 1.5 bigha/day, whilst Pradip’s ten strong group said they could manage three. A premium of BDT 20 per bigha could be charged for line planting, but the large average size of the plots in this area meant this could only normally be taken by bigger groups of 18 – 20. Further north, where land was more undulating, and plots were generally smaller and often terraced this would not be a constraint. Charges


37

would also be increased for smaller than normal seedlings, which were more difficult and time consuming to handle, and where the distance from seed bed to field was further than normal. 4.6.3 Demand for services and income Both groups were available to work for about nine months each year and found their services in good demand. If an individual fell sick it was normally necessary to find a temporary replacement. Samad’s group would spend much of April and May away from the area, travelling by train to Bogra district, where demand for labour was higher than in the outer part of the north-west. Group labourers could typically command BDT 70 – 80 per day. This compared favourably to the BDT 40 plus breakfast normally received by those hired individually. In terms of disposable income, it appeared that group labourers were often better off than small farmers, especially those who had a little land themselves. This was especially true of the leaders, who were said to always be able to produce BDT 1,000 when most farmers, even those with 10 bighas, could not. Taken as a whole, group labourers appeared relatively happy and self-confident by comparison with many of their small farmer counterparts. No women labour groups were encountered in this area, but they can be found elsewhere in the northwest. (See Lutfa case in Chapter 7). 4.7 Ishak plot history 4.7.1 The household and the plot Ishak is an old man. He still plays a part in household decision making, but management of his land is now increasingly being passed on to his two sons, with whom he lives in a joint family. Ishak was originally a labourer, but used his connections with a wealthy patron first to take land in tenancy and then to acquire plots of his own through mortgage arrangements. As a result he has been able to acquire about four acres and to elevate his family to middle farm status4. A common strategy has been to take possession of relatively cheap sloping land and then to improve it by levelling. This is what he did with a plot he acquired in the early 1980s that forms the subject of this case. The land in question was low lying, with loamy soil and was located close to the river. Initially a local amon variety (kolom) was grown in rotation with a local aus (vadoi), both of which offered only modest returns. In 1985, Ishak removed the soil from the higher part of the plot, using it to build up the land around his homestead. The immediate effect was to increase water holding capacity from 3-4 days up to 7 days, which in turn would make it far easier to cultivate an HYV boro crop, using a low-lift pump that drew water from the river. 4.7.2 Cultivation history Since that time the land has been double cropped with a boro/amon rotation each year, but the particular varieties grown have been changed on a regular basis (see 4 A fuller account of his livelihood strategy appears in CARE 2002, pp74-78.


38

Figure 4.4: Ishak. Crops grown on a selected plot 1994 -2004

Year Amon Boro Year

84 Vadoi (aus) 84

85 85

86 86

87

Kolom

China

87

88 88

89 89

90

Atom

90

91 BR16 91

92

Sapahar

China 92

93 Atom 93

94

BR11 China 94

95 Atom 95

96 China 96

97

Sapahar

Atom 97

98 China 98

99 Atom 99

00

Pajam red

China 00

01 (Sorno) BR11 Atom 01

02 BR16 02

03 Pari (Indian) 03

04

BR11

BR16 04

HYVs in bold


39

Figure 4.4). Ishak and his sons have followed a relatively conservative strategy, the key elements in which were: • Growing different varieties on different plots in the same year, so as to minimise

risk and meet the range of family needs. For example, some varieties are better for puffed rice (khoi), others for parched rice (muri) and other still get a better market price.

• Rotating varieties between plots from time to time to help maintain vitality and reduce the risk of pest infestation.

• Minimising expenditure by using relatively low amounts of fertiliser and pesticide and normally retaining his own seed from one season to another

• Not experimenting with new varieties themselves until they have seen them grown successfully by neighbours, and then acquiring seed relatively cheaply from the earlier adopters.

The conservative approach means that new varieties have only appeared fairly infrequently. Such switches as have occurred have sometimes been prompted by poor performance in a particular season, but have often then been reversed at a later date. For example: • The heavy infestation by army worm of the amon BR11 crop in 1994 led to its

temporary replacement by sapahar, a local variety • High winds damaged BR16 in boro 2002 which was then replaced for a season

by an Indian HYV. The comparatively rare examples of a new variety being selected for the higher yields that it appears to offer include: • The adoption of pajam in amon 1998 • The switch to BR16 in boro 2002. Sorno (see section 4.5) was also tried on a similar basis in amon 2001 but was damaged in early rains, immediately replaced by BR11, and never tried again.


40

5. CHAKALDI 5.1 Location and resources Chakaldi is a Muslim community that lies beside a small surfaced road a few miles away from the district town of Thakurgaon. The houses are strung out for a few hundred metres to either side of a track that runs away from the road to the south angles and passes a large madrassa before running on into a neighbouring para. Further tracks branch off to either side, one of which leads to a Hindu para a few hundred yards away to the west. An electric powerline, to which most bari have connections, crosses the fields.

Soils range from sandy loam to loam. Small outcrops of somewhat higher land immediately surround the bari to either side of the road, and cover some 15% of the total area. These are themselves encircled by a larger expanse of medium to medium high land, which accounts for a further 75% and, in turn, gives way at the borders to lower, loamier soils covering the remaining 10%. (For further details see Figure 5.1)

5.2 Kinship and class

The para is similar in size to Hatpara with 73 households, but is even more highly fragmented. The largest lineage contains only 13 households and the second largest only seven, although many groupings are again loosely linked by marriage (see Figure 5.2), in a structure that once more creates an unusually high degree of social capital for women.

The origins of this somewhat unusual pattern lie in a history of long distance inwards migration from areas including Mymensingh, Kishorganj and Gafargaon to the east of the Jamuna, where greater densities of population and large scale river movements have contributed to high land prices and left large numbers of households without sufficient means to support themselves.

The first of the present families appear to have started moving in following the creation of Pakistan in the late 1940’s, some taking over land vacated by a handful of departing Hindus who were the original settlers. The influx continued during the 1950s and 1960s, culminating with a series of arrivals immediately after the independence of Bangladesh in 1971 and the further Hindu exodus taking place around that time. All of this is reflected in a number of the individual cases studies below (see Sections 5.5 – 5.10 below).

By contrast with the longer settled para considered earlier, there is only one household that owns more than 10 acres of land, and as with Hatpara, most of those falling in the surplus and secure category rely heavily upon either business or relatively secure external employment for their livelihoods (see Figure 5.3). At the other end of the economic spectrum are a substantial number of households with little or no land, and from the 1980s onwards, there has been a progressive increase in the number of young men departing to work, on a seasonal or more permanent basis, as rickshaw pullers in Dhaka (see Case 5.5 for example).

5.3 Agricultural development It was only in the decade that followed the final wave of inward migration that all of the land falling under the para was cleared and brought under cultivation. Reflecting the familiar pattern found elsewhere, areas surrounding homesteads were used for a combination of fruit tree and local vegetable cultivation (see Annexe Figure 5.1).


41

Figure 5.1: Chakaldi. Land types and current cropping patterns

Poy

sh

Mag

h

Falg

un

Cha

ittra

Boi

shak

Jais

tha

Ash

at

Shr

abon

Bha

ddra

Ash

in

Kar

tik

Agr

ahay

n

Land height and

soil type

% o

f are

a


A

High and homestead Sandy loam

15 Leafy

vegetables

Beans, brinjal,gourds, onion, coriander

Leafy

Vegetables

B Med. High Sandy loam 40 Wheat Amon Wheat

C Med. High Sandy loam 15 Potato Amon Potato

D Medium Loam 10 Vegetables Amon Veg.

E Low Loam 10 Boro Amon

Rainfall


This was to continue well into the 1980s, when, as in Hatpara, a range of NGO and DAE training and other promotional initiatives began to see the uptake of new and improved varieties and the introduction of a more systematic approach to vegetable production. (The agencies involved and the more important changes introduced are discussed in Section 5.4 below and run through a number of the individual accounts that follow in Sections 5.5 to 5.10). These developments were to accelerate during the 1990s, culminating in the arrival of Shabge in 2001. Alongside the intensification of homestead production, and consequent upon the growing commercial possibilities arising in part through the opening of the Jamuna bridge, recent years have also seen the extension of vegetable cultivation into areas previously devoted to other longer established crops.

The evolution of land use on the lowest and marginal areas of the community has also followed a fairly straightforward course. Initially, the main crop here was local t.amon, grown in the main monsoon, and preceded in the early monsoon by either broadcast aus, or by jute, which at that time served as the primary commercial crop and source of cash. From the 1980s onwards, with the arrival of DTW and then STW irrigation and the first appearance of new varieties, this was progressively displaced by a much more productive rotation of HYV boro and t.amon.

On the remaining area, which is both a little higher and somewhat sandier, and therefore less able to retain moisture, a rather more complicated set of changes have


42

Figure 5.2: Chakaldi: line age, class and FFS membership by household

4 Generation lineage with 13 members linked to two smaller lineages by marriage

4 generation lineage with 13 households linked to two smaller lineages by marriage

3 generation lineage with 5 households in chain with 4 smaller lineages linked by marriage

Household with 4 daughters linked by marriage to 3 other small lineages

2 small lineages linked by marriage and 8 other unconnected lineages varying in size from 1 – 7 households

E

B

B

D E

E

E

C

C C

C C

C

C

B

B

C

C C

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

B

A

B

D

D

D

D

D

E

E

E

E

E

E E

E

E

E

E

E E

E E

B C

B

B

C

B

B

C

E

C

D

D

D

D D

EE C C C E E

B C D E E C D

A Big

Medium Marginal

Small Landless

Care member

Linked by marriage


43

taken place. The central theme is once again the substitution of low yielding local amon with superior HYV varieties from the 1980s onwards, but these have been surrounded by a diversity of crops and changes in the winter and early monsoon seasons. Figure 5.3. Chakaldi: households by class

Category Definition No. %

A Secure/surplus producers

Owns 4+ acres and/or large business and/or professional employment 10 13.7

B Vulnerable land owners Owns 1-4 acres and/or leases in > 1 acre 27 37.0

C Marginal farmers and tenants Owns or operates 0.05 – 0.99 acres 19 26.0

D Landless Owns < 0.05 acres 17 23.3

Total 73 100

Initially, as the final land was cleared, local potato and chilli were the favoured crops here, and potato has maintained a significant presence ever since with production being boosted in the 1990s by the arrival of shorter duration and more productive HYVs. Sugar, however, made a significant appearance in the 1980s and remained a major crop for several years, sustained in part by the need for a new source of cash as jute began to decline. This was first challenged and ultimately displaced with the arrival of HYV wheat in the 1990s, and in harness with t.amon this now forms the dominant individual rotation, covering some 40% of the total land area. (For more details of present rotations, see Figure 5.1.)

The various changes that have been detailed have gone hand in with a significant shift in the gender division of agricultural labour. In the 1970s, it was only Hindu women who were seen in the fields. Now increasingly, and particularly with the growth in vegetable cultivation, Muslim women may be seen carrying out a number of tasks on their own land and also hiring themselves out as agricultural labour. This is hardly unique, but the degree to which it has taken place is unusual, and may well at least partially reflect the comparative weakness of the lineage structures discussed earlier. (For a more detailed feel of the ways in which individual women from different economic strata have become more actively engaged see the cases discussed in Sections 5.5 - 5.7 below.)

5.4 Changes in vegetable cultivation A number of organisations have sought to promote improvements in vegetable cultivation. Prior to CARE, the most active had been RDRS and World View, both of which had organised practical training and covered a fairly extensive range of vegetables and practices. Other NGOs, like BRAC, ASHA and Grameen, tended simply to suggest that new practices for specific crops be adopted when providing credit, sometimes backed up by a demonstration on a selected plot. On the government side, BRDB had arranged some training, whilst the DAE BS advised a small group of farmers on a fairly regular basis, and in addition to the specific technical advice provided was said to be an important source of ideas about new varieties. Respondents also said that the nature of the recommendations hardly ever differ significantly from one agency to another.


44

5.4.1 Techniques A wide range of new cultivation procedures have been promoted. The most important (with the types of vegetable to which they apply in brackets) have been: • Growing seedlings in beds with protective covering and then transplanting to

increase viability and capacity to withstand adverse conditions (cole, fruit) • Keeping seedlings in a cow dung mixture in polythene bags prior to transplanting

to increase viability and reduce the risk of damage (gourds, papaya) • Standardisation of pit size and number of seeds sown, plus introduction of

compost, manure and chemical fertiliser prior to germination (gourds, country bean, yam)

• Preparation of beds for cultivation to aid fertiliser application, drainage and irrigation, accompanied by broadcasting (leafy, root) or line sowing (most beans, okra)

• Standardisation of seedling spacing by use of measuring devices (chilli, cole, most fruit)

• More extensive use of fencing, partially through introduction of cheaper fencing of life vegetation to prevent livestock incursion (all vegetables)

• Use of sticks to support plants and reduce incidence of rotting (tomato, brinjal) • More scientific, systematic composting using dried manure and a range of other

organic materials (all vegetables) • The more precise and systematic application of chemical fertilisers, together with

the use of dried dung and compost (all vegetables) • A more precise approach to irrigation (all vegetables) • The introduction of herbal pesticides to moderate excessive recourse to chemical

solutions (beans, cole, fruit, gourd, leafy) • The use of artificial pollination to enhance fertilisation rates (gourds) • The use of bagging to protect from fruit flies (gourds) (For a summary see figure 5.4. For further details of the changes promoted see Annexe Figures 5.2, 5.3) 5.4.2 Uptake Some of these have been accepted more readily than others. Those achieving a high level of adoption, irrespective of the type of farm have included: • standardised pit preparation; • “triangle” trellising using bamboos, where even those lacking the material

themselves will attempt to obtain a small quantity from neighbours; • sticks for tomatoes and brinjal; • a systematic approach to irrigation • herbal pesticides • artificial pollination This is not to say they will always be followed, however. Sometimes individuals are aware of new practices, but lack the time to use them themselves. This was particularly mentioned as a constraint with regard to the last two items listed. Others have found favour with the better off but have been rejected or modified by poorer producers.


45

• Some cannot afford to prepare seedlings using beds or plastic bags, and in some instances bags may be filled with raw rather than dried dung.

• The width of beds for the cultivation of the crop itself or the distance between beds may be reduced on smaller plots. It has been claimed that the gap can be narrowed from 9” to 6-7” without any adverse affect on yield.

• The space between seedlings has sometimes been reduced for similar reasons, but this has been found to reduce yields if not accompanied by a corresponding increase in fertiliser use.

• The very poorest producers will generally lack the resources to fence their plots. • Poorer households may construct smaller than recommended compost pits, leave

out the bamboo lining and cut down on the number of suggested inputs. • Often they cannot afford the suggested combination of chemical fertilisers and

will only use urea. Figure 5.4: New cropping practices promoted by organisation Organisation Practise C

AR

E

RD

RS

Wor

ld

Vie

w

Gra

mee

n

AS

HA

BR

AC

DA

E

BR

DB

TOTA

L

Improved fertiliser practise X X X X X X X 7

Improved composting X X X X X X X 7

Bed preparation X X X X X X 6

Standardised pit preparation X X X X 4

Seedling preparation X X X X 4

Improved irrigation practise X X X X 4

Increased use of fencing X X X 3

Standard seedling spacing X X X 3

Simplified trellis X Xa 2

Sticking to support plants X X 2

Herbal pesticide use X X 2

Artificial pollination X 1

Bagging X 1

TOTAL 13 10 8 4 4 3 2 2

(a) RDRS promotes alternatives to bamboo like wire


46

The opposite situation, where poorer producers follow a recommendation but the better off do things differently, has also been encountered. • Some larger scale commercial vegetable producers may lack the time or money

to hire labour to prepare beds and sow in lines. • The better off may combine bamboo and other materials with live fencing to make

it last longer. • Some may construct larger than recommended compost pits to meet the higher

demand of their land Finally there are a handful of suggested new practices such as mushroom cultivation that have been turned down by virtually all producers, irrespective of economic status. Sometimes an experiment is conducted before a decision is taken as to whether a precise recommendation will be followed or not. • Nasma, a commercial vegetable producer (see 5.6) compared red amaranth

production with and without beds and found that the former led to approximately double the yield. CARE FFS members were invited to conduct similar tests and found similar results.

• An experimental approach is generally adopted in the event of pest attack. First the advice of the BS is sought. The suggestion is then tested on a very small area and extended to the remainder of the plot if found to be successful. If the initial test fails, other potential solutions will be tried on a similar basis until something suitable is found.

• The tests with different bed and seedling spacings described above may also be regarded as small experiments.

5.4.3 Patterns of dissemination Our informants were not always able to describe the precise sequence in which adoption had taken place, and even where they could, were often unable to accurately recall the individuals involved in the sequence. For all this, fairly clear patterns seem to emerge, of which the example presented in Figure 5.5 provides a convenient illustration. Key points are as follows: • The number of individuals subsequently learning from an original trainee exposed

to an external source of knowledge is fairly small. • The secondary adopters may not pass on their knowledge to anyone and the

maximum number of tertiary adopters from any one secondary adopter is two. • Dissemination appears to stop at the tertiary level. • The overall size of the network through which dissemination takes place ranges

from 6 – 10 individuals, and there appears to be relatively little contact between networks.

• The initial points of contact are from the better off households, whilst those coming later in the sequence are noticeably poorer.


47

Figure 5.5: Sequence of adoption of new seedling preparation practices (with well-being ranking in brackets) 5.5 Safia case study (Shabge member) Safia is a 43 year old widow who lives in her own homestead in Chakaldi with her unmarried son. 5.5.1 Childhood and early learning She was born in 1962 in Mymensingh District and grew up as part of a large family with four sister and two brothers, together with step-brothers and sisters from her father’s second wife. Her father had attended madrassa for 2-3 years whilst her mother was illiterate. At that time, her father owned only 0.75 acres, but in 1972 the family sold up and moved to Dinajpur to take advantage of the much lower land prices. They settled in Milonpur, about a mile away from Chakaldi, and purchased a

Momena (57)

Anowara

Rehena (51)

Jahanara

Helena (27) From RDRS

Johura

Jahanara

Asma

Sajeda

Shanti (14), Monowara (26) From World View

Anowara (64)

Bedana

Nilufa

Meena (54)

Anowara (64)


48

4.5 acre plot. By now Safia was ten, and started to get involved in activities around the homestead. To begin with she would observe her mother growing vegetables and her father and uncle planting saplings, and recalls being instructed in certain tasks like irrigating the vegetables and making trellis, before starting to help out herself. She didn’t attend school, and at the age of 16 she married Ismail and moved to his homestead in Chakaldi, where she has remained ever since. Within a year of marriage, her daughter was born, and she was followed two years later by a son, Kasem. 5.5.2 Marriage, children and homestead cultivation Her husband owned 2 acres of arable land and a further 0.5 acre homestead plot, for which Safia took the main responsibility. 20 decimals were used for the homestead itself and for a small bamboo grove. The remaining 30 decimals were divided into a smaller area where bottle gourd, country beans and yard long beans were grown, and a somewhat larger portion devoted to potato, onion and garlic grown in rotation with amon seedlings. The potato plot yielded about 11 maunds a year, of which most were sold, giving an annual income of about BDT 500. Safia did no work on the main rice plot, but contributed by storing seeds and looking after the post-harvest processing. She also kept a small number of poultry. In her new role, Safia had to take on greater responsibilities, but was mainly able to apply what she had already learnt in the parental home. Since her parents lived close by she was able to continue to ask their advice when new problems arise, and also picked up additional bits and pieces of knowledge by observing what was going on around her and discussing things from time to time with her neighbours. 5.5.3 Surviving as a widow She continued in this way for a few years as her children were growing up, but in 1988, her husband fell seriously ill with a stomach ailment. 0.75 acres of land and a bullock had to be sold to meet hospital expenses, but shortly afterwards he died, leaving his young family in a precarious position. Safia felt unable to keep looking after her young son, and for a time considered having him taken into care, but a step-sister, who lived a few miles away, then agreed to look after him, whilst her daughter remained with her in the homestead. The remaining 1.25 acres of arable land were then leased out to a neighbour, Haris. Safia was able to go on tending the homestead plot by herself, as her daughter gradually picked up the skills required to help, in much the same way that Safia herself had learnt as a child. A few years later, when she was only 14, the daughter married and moved away to live with her new husband who was a rickshaw puller in Dhaka. Safia was now entirely alone, but two years on, in 1994, Kasem came back to live with her. Although only 14, he had already learned the rudiments of farming from his uncle, and was able to take the leased land back from Haris and start cultivating it himself, using a loan from the Grameen Bank to buy a bullock and to meet other initial cultivation expenses. Although complaining that her son did not help her as much as she would have liked, his return seems to have given Safia a new lease of life. As well as continuing to cultivate her plot, she started planting fruit trees around the homestead: starting with guava in 1995, adding jack and mango in 1997, and finishing with olive, jujube, pomelo and betal in1999. The food and income generated from the rice and


49

Figure 5.6: Safia time matrix Phase Key events Lives Key resources Activity

62 Born (4 sisters, 2 brothers)

Mymen-singh

Father owns 0.75 acres

Child/ Adolescent (1962-77)

72 Family migrates

Milonpur

Father buys 4.5 acres

Helps with homestead trees and vegetables

Wife (1978-88)

78 Marries Ismail 78 Daughter born

Mother (1978-)

80 Kashem Son born

Husband has 2.5 acres of which 0.5 acres homestead

Cultivates homestead vegetables, amon seedlings. Rice seed storage and processing for 2.0 acre plot Raises poultry

88 Ismail dies Kashem sent to step-sister 92 Daughter marries, goes to Dhaka

0.75 acres + bullock sold for hospital expenses. 1.25 acres leased to Haris (neighbour)

Leased land taken back, worked by son

Continues homestead cultivation and poultry

Grameen Bank loan to buy bullock and meet rice expenses.

95-9 Plants additional trees in homestead

01-03 Small consumption and housing loans 02 Bullock and tree sold to repay loans

01 Joins Shabge. Extends homestead vegetable cultivation

Widow (1988-)

94 Son returns

Chakaldi

03 Further loan to buy bullock and cultivate rice

03 Discontinues vegetables but amon seedling still grown


50

homestead land were sufficient to support mother and son for 9-10 months a year, and for the remaining period Kasem would go to work as a rickshaw puller in Dhaka, where he was able to earn about BDT 3,000 each month. Together with a series of smaller loans from Grameen that were used to cover a combination of production and consumption expenses, this was just sufficient to ensure survival, although on one recent occasion a bullock that was used for land preparation had to be sold to repay a loan, and a new loan then taken out shortly afterwards so that a replacement could be obtained. In 1999 the assistant Upazilla Livestock officer contacted her and vaccinated her chicken, and again provided vaccination for her cow when it became sick in 2001. 5.5.4 Acquiring, applying and abandoning new skills In 2001, Safia became a member of the Shabge group and acquired a number of new skills. These included: land preparation techniques; insect control; the cultivation of new varieties of leafy and non-leafy vegetable; nursery management; and fertiliser application for fruit trees (for more details see Annexe Figure 5.2). For the next year or two she was able to apply much of what she had learned on her own vegetable plot, producing enough to meet family needs for six months of the year, but more recently she has faced a number of difficulties. It is heavy work to prepare the land and with her son unwilling to help, it has become too difficult for her to manage by herself. Neither is he prepared to help purchase the inputs that she requires. In addition, it has proved hard to protect the crop from chickens, goats and ducks, and production has also been hampered by the shade from jackfruit and mango trees planted on the border of the plot by a neighbour. As a consequence Safia has now abandoned all of her winter vegetable cultivation, although she does continue to use the plot to produce amon seedlings. (For a summary of Safia’s life and agricultural activities see Figure 5.6 and Annexe Figure 5.4). 5.6 Najma case study Najma is a 34 year old woman who lives with her husband and four children on a small farm in Chakaldi. 5.6.1 Childhood and early learning The fourth of five girls and the eighth of ten children, she was born in Gafargaon Upazilla in Mymensingh District in 1970, where her father farmed 7 acres of land. When she was two, shortly after the war of liberation, the family came to Shingpara in Thakurgaon, having learnt from her uncle, a government employee who had already made the move himself, about the greater availability of land. The sale of the former holding was sufficient to buy 12.5 acres in the new area from departing Hindu families. This, in turn, guaranteed a comfortable living. Najma was sent to school for ten years, finishing at secondary level in 1986 when she was16. The curriculum included home economics for girls and offered no instruction in agriculture. But from the age of 11 or 12 Najma started to help and learn from her mother, who had herself been educated for six years. The family had a plot where they grew vegetables, including bottle gourd, country bean, brinjal and potato, mainly for their own consumption. In particular, she recalls being taught about the use of seeds: including whether they should be sown horizontally or vertically; the appropriate depth; and whether or not prior soaking was required.


51

From time to time she would also join one of her elder brothers, helping by standing on the ladder as he prepared the land. She also learnt by observing relations and neighbours as they went about their work. 5.6.2 Working on her husband’s family farm On leaving school, she was immediately married to Kuddus and moved the two miles to live with his family in Chakaldi. Kuddus was himself a migrant, his parents having come from Kishoregoanj district several years earlier. His family owned 9 acres on which they cultivated paddy, jute and a variety of vegetables including: red amaranth, bitter gourd, snake gourd, okra, potato, and til (an oil crop). The vegetables were cultivated on a somewhat larger and more commercial scale than in her parental home. The environment, the crops grown, and the techniques employed were all quite similar and already broadly familiar, but the greater intensity of cropping made the overall management process more complex. More labour was required, inputs had to be purchased and budgeted for, and decisions made about the best combinations of crops to grow in the light of evolving environmental, market and personal circumstances. As a young bride and a junior member of her husband’s joint family, Najma was confined mainly to cooking, crop processing and other domestic tasks, and had less opportunity than she would have liked either to apply what she already knew or to get to grips with the new challenges of a more commercially oriented production system. Such thoughts in any case had to be thought to put to one side as children began to arrive and preoccupy her, starting with a son in 1988 and followed by three daughters, the youngest of whom was born after a considerable gap in 2001. 5.5.3 Acquiring new skills through training But as her older children started to grow up, Nasma felt ready for new challenges. In 1994, she took on a local job as a non-formal primary school teacher with the NGO HADS. She taught children up to year five, beginning with a monthly payment of BDT 500, with an annual increment of BDT 25. This employment lasted for nearly 10 years. No agriculturally related subjects were taught. In 1996, Kuddus agreed that she could attend a training course organised by the Bangladesh Rural Development Board (BRDB). There were two sessions, one lasting for 3 days in Dinajpur, and the other for 7 days in Thakurgaon. These covered fish culture and the cultivation of red amaranth, Indian spinach, elanga, bottle gourd, bitter gourd, cabbage and okra. Following the course, Najma was allowed to set up a trial growing red amaranth and okra by traditional methods and in beds, from which she was able to demonstrate that yields could be doubled by the new approach. As part of the follow up to the course, she started to receive regular visits from the Block Supervisor (BS), who advised her on insecticides, although his suggestions did not always work, and sometimes left her needing to seek her own solutions. She was also permitted to apply what she had learned about fish culture in the family pond, and although this led to a measure of success, she became disillusioned and gave up when most of the additional production arising was claimed by other joint owners. The following year she attended a further series of training events organised in Thakurgaon by the NGO Rangpur Dinajpur Relief Services (RDRS). These covered some of the same ground but also allowed her to acquire important new skills. A three day course in Thakurgaon went into greater depth on leafy vegetables, including red amaranth, spinach, helencha, kalmi, data, bothna, radish, jute and


52

Indian spinach. A seven day course dealt with other vegetables including cauliflower, brinjal, bitter gourd, cucumber, snake gourd, ridge gourd, okra, and potato. A further seven day session covered the rudiments of nursery management. 5.6.4 Vegetable cultivation on her own farm Najma shared what she had learnt with Kuddus, but there was only limited scope for the new ideas to be put into practice for as long as they remained within the confines of the joint family enterprise and under the control of her father-in-law. In 1999, however, after 13 years in the extended family fold, it was finally agreed that they should receive their inheritance and be allowed to set up by themselves. Kuddus was given 1.5 acres of land, together with a pair of bullocks and sufficient rice to support them through the first six months. They received nothing further when Kuddus’s father died three years later. They were also given nothing when Najma’s own father died at around the same time, and given the large number of other actual and potential claimants, decided not to pursue the matter.

This has left them to survive as a typical small farm household, with significantly fewer resources than were available on either side of the family during their respective childhoods. The farm was divided into three plots, each of approximately equal size. One was relatively low lying and continued to be used for a boro rice crop. On the second, the previous rotation of wheat and jute was replaced by wheat and okra, although partly as a result of a marked dropped in price, this was initially not very successful and led to a small net loss (see Annexe Figure 5.5). The third plot, which fell mainly under Najma’s management, was transformed using the knowledge she had acquired from her training. When her father-in-law had been in charge, this was used to grow an early winter radish and a late winter potato crop, and then remained fallow through the period from March to mid-October. With Najma in control, it was now farmed much more intensively with a wider range of crops (see Annexe Figure 5.6). On part of the area, the potato was replaced by red amaranth with the radish being retained on a small area and displaced by coriander and napa elsewhere. The other portion of the land was used for almost continuous gourd cultivation, starting with snake and ridge gourd and followed by either cucumber or bitter gourd. Kuddus ploughs, makes pits, ladders (breaking the clods), applies fertiliser and markets. Assisted by her elder children, who became involved from the age of 11-12, Nasma sows seeds, irrigates, makes trellis and collects crops. Reported yields have increased dramatically (see Annexe Figure 5.5), with the net value of production rising by more than BDT 30,000. Even if as seems likely this has been somewhat overstated, and even if the present intensity of cultivation proves unsustainable, it would still appear that a major improvement has been achieved. 5.6.5 Difficulties encountered Not everything, however, has gone smoothly. In 2002, Nasma attempted to create a nursery on a small piece of land growing mango, jackfruit, blackberry (jum) and bokain, but she forgot to fence off the area and goats and chickens damaged the saplings. With the vegetables cultivated substantial amounts are required for fertilizer and insecticides, often at times when the family is short of cash. Bitter gourds have been affected by foot rotting, and when the BS advised Nasma to apply Comolus, they failed to recover, although when she tried Tagor, this proved successful.


53

Figure 5.7: Najma Aktar. Time matrix Phase Key events Lives Key resources Activity

70 Born

Gaforgaon

Father has 7 acres

Childhood (1970-75)

72 Migrate to Thakurgaon

Student (1976-85)

Primary/seco-ndary school

Shingpara

Father buys 12.5 acres

Helps mother with seed storage, vegetable cultivation, post-harvest

86 Marries Kuddus

Assists in commercial vegetable cultivation

Wife, mother (1986-)

88 Son born

Father in law owns 9 acres

94 Non-formal SERP teacher 96 Training from BRDB 97 Training from RDRS Starts to apply training and to experiment

99 Split from father-in-law household 01 birth of 3rd daughter

Inherits 1.5 acres (including 50d veg.) + 2 bullocks

Higher involvement with field operations. Greater scope to apply training, experiment Creates nursery (fails)

02 Father dies but no inheritance

02 Starts to advise other households

Own household (1999-)

Chakaldi

03 SERP job ends

Neither has it been possible to apply everything covered in training. Nasma, for example, has not grown kangkong (kalmi) because the crop demands heavy irrigation and water has to be carried to the plot in a pitcher. Brinjal cannot be grown because it does not fit the selected rotation and is not very suitable for the type of soil. The pond they have acquired dries up for a part of the year and is again not very suitable.


54

5.5.6 Providing an example for others For all this, progress has still been impressive, and others have been quick to recognise and seek to emulate what has been achieved. These include one of her brothers, who has taken her advice and is now successfully cultivating sweet gourd, bottle gourd, ash gourd, cucumber and spinach on a 37.5 decimal plot. Nasma has also advised her brother in law, Sattar, on how to grow radish, coriander and red amaranth on a smaller plot, although on this occasion the outcome was not successful, due, according to Nasma, to a lack of support from Sattar’s wife. (For a summary of key developments see Figure 5.7) 5.7 Mocha Kulsum Begom case study Mocha is a 54 year old landless women and a Shabge member. It was only possible to take one interview with her and the account contains some significant gaps. But although incomplete it still offers some important insights. The story she tells is of a hard life marked by a series of misfortunes. 5.7.1 Childhood Mocha was born in Mymensingh in 1949, the sixth of eight children and the third of four daughters. Her father, who was illiterate, owned 7.5 acres of river side land. It seems that this was prone to flooding. When she was ten the land was sold and the family moved to Hindupara in Thakurgaon, some half a kilometre from Chakaldi, where they purchased a 5 acre plot. Although this was more productive and valuable land, Mocha says that her father was deceived and should have been able to get more for his money. As a child, she would work with her mother, who had herself received some schooling. She helped with drying the rice, collecting the seed, and drying and heaping the straw after threshing. She also worked on the vegetable plot where country bean, yard long bean, snake gourd, bitter gourd, ridge gourd and cucumber were all grown. She learnt how to prepare pits, to make trellis, to apply manure, to irrigate and to harvest and acquired a number of more specific skills. These included a method of cultivating bottle gourd in which the stem was split and placed in broken pots, and a way of controlling aphid by spreading ash on country beans. She also learned how to plant saplings but never had the opportunity to apply this knowledge herself. Mocha attended school for four years, starting in 1962. 5.7.2 Farmer’s wife In 1966, when she was 17, Mocha was married to Khoka Mia and moved to Chakaldi. Like herself, Khoka came from a large family and had brothers and three sisters. His father owned 5 acres and Khoka was given 1.5 acres to farm himself. This was used to grow potato, rice and jute crops, but according to Mocha, her husband was not a good farmer, hiring labour and then expecting them to get on with the job without any supervision. Her own responsibilities appear to have been confined mainly to domestic work and post-harvest operations, and she makes no mention of any vegetable cultivation.


55

A son was born in 1969 and another followed in 1972, but the second only lived for a few days and the other died shortly afterwards. Her misfortune continued when she became pregnant again but then miscarried. Over the next few years she then had two daughters who both survived and a son who again died as an infant. 5.7.3 The slide into landlessness Her father died in 1974 and left her 12.5 decimals of homestead land, but this was occupied by her brother Ata Mia, a school teacher. From 1979 onwards Khoka was Figure 5.8: Mocha Kulsum Begom matrix Phase Key events Lives Key resources Activity

49 Born Mymensingh Father has 7.5 acres by riverbank

59 Migrate to Thakurgaon

Childhood (1949-66)

62 Goes to school

Hindupara Father buys 5 acres but is cheated

Assists mother in vegetable cultivation and paddy processing

66 Marries Khoka Mia

69-72 has 2 children but both die

Husbands family has 5 acres. Khoka gets 1.25

74 Father dies

Inherits 12.5 dec. but used by brother

79 Daughter

82 Son born/dies

79 Husband starts to sell land

Farmer’s Wife (1966-86)

86 Daughter

Chakaldi

86 Last land sold including homestead

86 Goes back to own homestead

Hindupara?

Domestic work and childcare

02 Becomes a day labourer

Landless (1986-)

89 Moves in with nephew

Chakaldi

03 Collects leaves from sugar farm for fuel

03 Joins Shabge

unable to produce enough from his land to meet all the family expenses and a portion had to be sold. Further sales followed in subsequent years, and by 1986, everything,


56

including the homestead, was lost. At this point, Mocha went back to live on her own plot with her brother and daughters, whilst Khoka found work as a permanent labourer, receiving BDT 40 and 1.5 kg of rice each day. Relations with Ata Mia were not easy and following a serious argument in 1977 Mocha was forced to leave. The family were then taken in by one of Khoka’s sisters sons and have lived, free of charge, in their homestead ever since. Despite all their difficulties Mocha was somehow able to send her daughters to primary school, and in 2000 the elder girl was married to a garments factory worker who lives in Jamalpur. By 2002, however, things had taken a further turn for the worse and Mocha, at the age of more than 50, has had to start labouring herself. She mainly does post-harvest work on the rice and wheat crops, earning BDT 25 a day and receiving 1.5 kg of rice. In Chaittra and Agrahayan, when demand is at a peak, she can find work every day, whilst at other times she usually works for about 15 days a month. She has become so poor that she now has to gather leaves for fuel from the nearby sugar farm. In 2003 she joined Shabge, where she was shown how to grow red amaranth, Indian spinach and yard long bean, but she says that this did not really teach her anything that she did not already know. (For a summary of key points see Figure 5.8) 5.8 Kader Miah and Mofiz Uddin. Plot History. 5.8.1 The plot and the farmers This case study concerns a plot of land in Chakaldi that is owned by Kader Miah but currently leased by Mofiz Uddin. Kader is a marginal farmer who has 35 decimals of land under rice and wheat, and also runs a tea stall. He is an uneducated man of 56 and is married to Mina, who is also illiterate and a full CARE member. They have three sons and three daughters, ranging in age from 5-16. Mofiz is one of the better off members of the para. He only has 2 acres of land and this is all leased out, but he owns 35 rickshaws from which he is able to earn a good living. He is 42 and uneducated. His wife, Romeza, is 26 and also illiterate, and like Mina she is a full Shabge member. They have three sons and one daughter. The plot in question is only 4 decimals in area and over the last decade has been used mainly for vegetable cultivation. The soil is loam clay. The dikes at the border are the most fertile part because this is where the beans have been grown. The central area has been rather more intensively cropped and is of somewhat lower fertility. This part of the plot is also subject to water logging although this problem has become less serious following drainage work carried out by Kader in 2000. Our interviews dealt with the cultivation of the plot over the last ten years, with Kader covering the period up to the end of 2002, and Mofiz providing information about what has been happening since he and Romeza took over in 2003. In the early years, from 1994-99, the water logging meant that nothing could be grown from mid-April to mid-October, and that activities were confined to the cultivation of a single crop in the remainder of the year. Thereafter more intensive cultivation became possible.


57

5.8.2 Patterns of cultivation 1994-2004 Reviewing the period as a whole, the most striking thing is the frequency with which crops have been changed, with nothing being grown for more than three consecutive years. • Red amaranth was grown in 1994 and 1995 and offered a reasonable income,

with a small proportion of the crop being retained for home consumption. Kader did most of this work himself with Mina also making a significant input

• But by the following year, Kader was looking for ways of increasing his income and noticed that the price of chilli seedlings was increasing on the local market. The crop lent itself well to a small plot of land, and Kader was able to secure a loan from the Grameen bank to cover the higher input costs. Mina now took on the major role, with support from a small amount of hired labour: a pattern that was to continue in subsequent years. This resulted in a modest increase in net returns, and the crop was continued in 1997 and 1998.

• By 1999, country beans were becoming increasingly popular and appeared to offer the prospect of a further improvement in returns. Kader was also attracted by the fact that the seeds could be retained for later seasons. Unfortunately, however, the crop was attacked by pod borer, leading to a poor yield and an income only barely sufficient to cover costs.

• Discouraged by this experience, Kader looked for other alternatives in 2000. Small banana plantations were now starting to appear in the area, and although these required a much higher investment than other crops, good profits could be obtained. As perennial crops, these required favourable growing conditions throughout the year, and Kader thus first had to drain the plot. A good return was ultimately achieved, but the high investment cost made cultivation risky for a marginal farmer.

• In the following year, 2001, Kader therefore reverted to chilli seedlings. • By 2002, however, a new variety of Indian spinach, which attracted a high market

price, had become available. Taking advice from a farmer who had grown it before, Kader tried it out, but the seed he used turned out to be of very low quality. The produce was not good enough to be sold and had to be consumed at home.

• In 2003, Mofiz took over the operation of the plot. In the first year, mustard was grown as a leafy vegetable, the crop being favoured since it offered a good return from a short growing season, and found a ready market, even inside the para. Romeza did most of the work, with smaller inputs from other family members.

• This year, partly as a result of what Romeza has learnt from Shabge, a more intensive and diversified cropping pattern has been followed, with snake gourd on one portion of the land, and bottle gourd on another, whilst the major part of the area has been double cropped with taro and red amaranth. Most of the crop has not yet been harvested, but a good return is anticipated, of which about half is likely to be consumed by the household itself.

5.8.3 Key sources of information This brief history already reveals quite a lot about where information can be obtained and how decisions are taken. Markets are clearly monitored closely and price movements responded to. A close watch is kept upon what neighbours and others are doing for new ideas, and problems experienced quickly result in crops being dropped. Risk is also a key consideration.


58

Figure 5.9 Kader Miah and Mofix Uddin Plot Case Study Kader Miah crops grown by year

Yr Main crop Reason for change

94 Start • High market price • Profitable and self-consumption

95

Red amaranth Stop • Shortage of money, no other income from labour

• Got loan to go for what was assumed more profitable 96

Start

• Increasing local demand • Profitable and self-consumption • Manageable on small piece of land

98

Chilli seedling

Stop • More profitable alternative available

Start • Have become well known in community • Can consume and retain seeds

99

Country bean

Stop • Pod borer attack affects quality … low price.. little profit

Start • Learns from market that can be grown in sandy/loam • Seedlings are available in nearby village

00

Banana Stop • Profit good but close maintenance required

• Much capital needed cannot afford investment

Start • Return to familiar crop 01

Chilli seedling

Stop • More profitable option arises

Start

• New variety introduced with high market price • Promoted by Shahidul • Advice from farmer who grew before

02

Indian spinach

Stop • Very low quality seed used • Unable to sell in market

Mofiz Uddin crops grown by the year

Start • Short duration and high price • Ready market, even inside para

03

Mustard for leafy vegetable

Stop • New option arose

04

Taro, red amar., snake & bottle gourd

Start • Saw on other plot

• Taro needs 6 months redam only 2.

Further discussions with the two informants offered a series of more detailed insights. • Seeds and information about how they should be used were available from

multiple sources including the NGO World Vision, Grameen Bank, the DAE, the local Gorea market and the more distant one at Thakurgaon, with CARE also contributing.

• More locally, both husbands and wives had their own small networks within which new ideas were obtained and passed on. Mofiz often relied upon Khalil his father, whilst providing free seed to three relations in a neighbouring para. Romeza picked up ideas from Bedana, a non-relation but a Shabge associate or ‘buddy’ member, who showed her how to use ash to control pests


59

• Mofiz revealed that he had learnt from the nearby sugar farm to apply granular pesticide prior to cultivation to destroy harmful pests, although he admitted to being unsure as to the appropriate dosage for his land.

(For a summary of the plot history see Figure 5.9. For financial details see Annexe Figure 5.7) 5.9 Azizul: Plot history 5.9.1 The household and the plot Azizul Haq is in his forties and lives in Chakaldi. He received eight years education and is a small farmer, owning 1.5 acres of land. He mainly grows wheat and cultivates a small area of boro paddy. 0.5 acres are currently shared out. Most of the time he works as a field man for Palli Bidyut, a local NGO, and he was positioned 16 out of 73 in the para well being ranking. His wife, Khadeza, is 35 and received no education. They have two sons and three daughters, ranging in age from 5-13, all of whom currently attend school. The case study is based on a 20 decimal plot with sandy and sandy loam soil that the households have cultivated continuously since 1984. It immediately adjoins lower irrigated land from which it absorbs a considerable amount of moisture. As in other cases that have been discussed, a wide diversity of crops have been grown, with changes taking place almost every year, and only a minority of earlier crops being subsequently repeated. The long period of cultivation made it difficult for Azizul to give precise explanations for all of the individual decisions that have been made, but his account was still sufficiently detailed to form a reasonably clear picture of what he has been doing and the underlying strategy that has been pursued. 5.9.2 Cropping history Azizul has generally favoured either long duration crops like brinjal or pointed gourd, or those that can be harvested continually throughout the year, like country bean. He has only double cropped on one or two occasions, and in these instances only provided information about the main crop grown in a particular year. • Gourds have been grown on a number of occasions, starting with snake gourd in

1984, but this was adversely affected by DTW irrigation from the adjacent plot and was not repeated.

• This was followed by pointed gourd in 1985. This appears to have been a success.

• A small area was again devoted to the crop in 1986, but Azizul had seen others beginning to grow cauliflower and wanted to try it himself. It was easy to produce seedlings using cuttings and this was said to help keep production costs below the level of those incurred with gourds, although this is contradicted by other information that was provided. In any event, the crop was damaged at harvesting time, possibly as a result of a pest attack, and was not repeated.

• In 1987, ridge gourd was tried for the first time, Azizul being attracted by the possibilities for continuous production over an extended period of time, the high prices that could be obtained in the middle part of the season, and by its pest resistant qualities.

• Yard long beans had arrived in the area by this time and foundation seeds were available both in the markets and from the local NGO HADS. Anticipating high


60

yields and prices, Azizul decided to try them out in 1988, but pests proved to be a serious problem, and the costs of controlling them ate heavily into profits.

• By 1989, potatoes were commanding high prices in local markets, and the recent installation of the DTW nearby suggested that the soil would be moist enough to give good yields. An additional consideration was that the crop could be stored for relatively lengthy periods. But in the event, the irrigation requirement turned out to be greater than had been expected. A lot of time had to be spent constructing channels and lifting water. This raised costs and again reduced profits, and like most things that had gone before was therefore abandoned after a single attempt.

• There then followed a period of four consecutive years from 1990-1993 when only yard long beans were grown. By comparison with other alternatives, costs were relatively low and prices relatively high, and it was only the belief that it would be bad for the soil to continue with a single crop indefinitely that led to them eventually being abandoned.

• In 1994, Azizul experimented with an improved variety of potato that had been introduced by the BS, but returns were again disappointing.

• The following year he switched to chilli, having observed the success enjoyed by other local farmers, and the good returns that could be achieved for a fairly small investment.

• In 1996, following Liakat (see 5.10), and taking the advice of the BS, Azizul tried an improved variety of brinjal that had recently become available. This did not work very well. The return was only modest and the roots spread laterally under the soil, hampering inter-cultural operations. In any case, aware that brinjal rarely performed well in a second consecutive season, Azizul decided not to grow it again.

• He turned instead to tassel gourd, which he had learned about on a DAE training course, and using seed supplied by the BS. The crop did well and was retained for a second year in 1998.

• In 1999 Azizul reverted to chilli but was deterred from continuing by a combination of fruit borer attack, which had to be treated by pesticide, and damping off disease

• By 2000 a new and supposedly improved variety of yard long bean was being promoted by RDRS as a part of a training course attended by Khadeza. They decided to test it on their land, but the results were not very good.

• Bottle gourd was grown in 2001 but only for one season as the cost of trellis was quite high and it was believed that yields tended to decline in a second year.

• Chilli was repeated in 2002. • In 2003 brinjal was tried again with a loan from Grameen Bank being used to

cover the input costs. Throughout the period that has been reviewed, Azizul reports that he has usually done about half the work himself. Khadeza is said to have made a more minor contribution, but the range of tasks undertaken - from preserving and sowing the seeds, through weeding and mulching to harvesting – suggests that this may have been understated. The elder sons are now beginning to help as well, and a small amount of labour has been hired each year. The family has never sold all its output but has typically marketed 80-90%. The only exceptions have been the potato crops, where half were consumed, and chilli, where the household kept about half for itself. Overall gourds generally appear to perform well, with very high gross yields compensating for relatively high input costs. Chillies, with their low costs and reasonable yields, offer the second best overall returns. Yard long beans and brinjal both do relatively poorly and potato is the least successful.


61

5.10: Azizul crops grown by year (Informant could not recall reasons for starting and discontinuing crops in all instances)

Yr Main crop Reason for change

Start

84

Snake gourd

Stop • Not good to repeat in successive years • Production hampered by DTW irrigation

Start

85

Pointed gourd

Stop

Start

• Cost of production less than pointed gourd • Easy to produce seedlings by using cutting • Wants to try a crop that has newly arrived in community

86

Cauliflower (18d) Pointed gourd (2d) Stop • All plants damaged during harvesting

Start

• Pest tolerant • Continuous production possible for 3 months • High price in middle of season

87

Ridge gourd

Stop

Start

• Sees newly arrived in market • Assesses that yield and value will be high • Foundation (local impr) seed available from HADS & market

88

Yard long bean

Stop • Does not grow as expected • Has to spend 2-3 times on pest control & management

Start

• Sees prices are high in the market • DTW installed that will help to get better yields • Keeps for longer period than other crops

89

Potato

Stop • Land higher than surrounding. Special channels have to be

constructed and a lot of time spent lifting water • High production costs

Start • Lower cost than potato • Better returns than other crops

90

Country beans

Stop • Did not wish to cultivate continuously

Start • BS introduced to him & decided to grow as experiment 94

Improved local potato Stop

Start • Sees others growing on fallow land after amon • Low production cost but high market price

95

Chilli

Stop

Start • Sees Liakat and others growing • BS recommends

96

Improved brinjal

Stop

• Roots spread out under soil, hampering inter-cultural operations & drainage system and reducing soil fertility

• Observes that other invariably have problems – unhealthy plants, low yield in 2nd year

Start • BS supplied seed and DAE provided veg cult training 97

Tassel gourd

Stop

D = decimals


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Azizul crops grown by year (continued)

Start

99

Chilli

Stop • Fruit borer pest attack and damping off disease • Had to spend on pesticides

Start

• Collected hybrid seed and got RDRS training on veg and beans cultivation

• Believed yields would be high

00

Yard long bean new – challisa

Stop • Cultivated as a test to see which variety best in his field

Start 01

Bottle gourd

Stop • Believed good result could not be obtained in 2nd year • Trellis cost

02 Chilli Start •

03 Brinjal Start • Grameen provided loan BDT 4,000 in 2003 and 2004 • Extra support available from family and children

Taking stock, decisions appear to have been influenced by a range of factors • Observation of new possibilities being tried out by other people and of what is

doing well in the market, coupled with a willingness to take risks and experiment • The advice of the BS together with DAE training and input supply • Similar inputs from a range of NGOs • The observation that yields decline after two or more consecutive years of

cultivation and the consequent need for frequent rotation • The wish to avoid pest attacks and disease, and the expenses with which they

are associated More specifically, Azizul mentions that he meets most evenings with a small group of close relations and neighbours, and uses this network to evaluate experiences and explore new possibilities. On one occasion the manager of a local company, Ciba Gaigy, advised him about pesticide use, warning that tolerance could easily be built up if it was used in an indiscriminate fashion. It is also apparent that Khadeza has a network of her own, with a number of neighbours seeking her advice about their own vegetable cultivation. (For further details on crops, costs and returns, see Figure 5.10 and Annexe Figure 5.8) 5.10 Liyakat: Plot history 5.10.1 The household and the plot Liyakat is 45 and lives in Chakaldi. He is a small farmer who owns an acre of land, 25 decimals of which is shared out. He mainly cultivates paddy and wheat. He also runs a local grocery store and stood 38th out of 73 households in the well-being ranking. He received nine years education, which is unusual for someone of his modest economic status. He is married to Rahima, who is 32 and attended school for five years. They have an 18 year old daughter, and sons aged 13 and 14, all of whom are still in full-time education. The plot that forms the subject of this case stands beside the intersection of the pukka road that leads to Thakurgaon and the smaller track running down into


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Chakaldi. It is 20 decimals in area and has sandy loam soil. Fertility and water holding capacity are relatively low, and regular application of compost and fertiliser is required. It has been continuously operated by Liakat since 1983. 5.10.2 Cropping history 1983-2004 The plot has been managed in different ways at different points in time. Three broad and distinct phases may be identified (see Annexe Figure 5.10): 1. From 1983-88, it was under local potato cultivation. 2. From 1989-96, the area was divided between five crops, some of which

overlapped and others of which were cultivated at different times of the year, although no part of the land was double cropped. Red amaranth, country bean and chilli were cultivated throughout the period, together with a smaller area of yard long bean, whilst onion was grown up until 1994 when brinjal was introduced.

3. The period from 1997 has seen a similar, but somewhat more complicated pattern, with red amaranth and country bean again being grown each year and accounting for the largest areas, and onion being grown each year but one. Lapa has also become established as a regular component, coriander was grown in the first part of the period, and three other crops – brinjal, carrot and bottle gourd – appear for only one to two years each.

The areas of land where the crops grown most recently have been cultivated are illustrated in Annexe Figure 5.9 . Where they could be recalled, the reasons for the different crops being selected and then replaced are as follows: • Liyakot first grew potatoes after he had seen other farmers trying them and

discussed their results. His own experience proved fairly positive and he continued with the crop for six years, although in the absence of irrigation and good quality seed only modest returns could be achieved. He finally decided to give in when continuous cultivation led to a decline in soil fertility and pest attacks and diseases began to become a problem.

• Red amaranth has been grown ever since that time, because it provides a constant supply for home consumption whilst finding a ready market. In 2003, the relatively low yielding type was replaced by an improved variety. Country bean has been cultivated for the same reason, although in this instance an improved variety has been available since 1997. Liyakat intends, however, to replace both crops next year, since he again feels that soil fertility is declining from continuous cultivation. Continuing crops are rotated from one part of the plot to another in successive years

• Brinjal has been cultivated for two shorter two year periods, but on each occasion the area devoted to the crop has been relatively large. A local variety was cultivated in the first instance, the main attraction being the opportunity for higher cash returns, but pest attack led to the loss of the entire crop during the second season, with falling prices providing a further disincentive to continue. He took up the crop again when an improved variety became available and was recommended by the BS.

• Coriander was first grown following a training course from HADS, but did not do very well as a result of the late onset of the rains


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Figure 5.11: Liyakat. Reasons for changes in crops grown

Yr Crop Year Reasons for change

83 Start • Observed and discussed with other farmers

88

Local Potato

Stop

• Poor quality local seed • Lack of irrigation • Pest attack and disease • Declining organic matter in soil • Low production 20 maunds/profitability (1000-800 = 200 tk)

89 Start • Needed for consumption every day

96

Local country bean Stop • Poor profitability

• Improved local variety becomes available

89 Start • Needed for consumption every day

02

Local red Amaranth

Stop • Improved variety introduced

95 Start • High value crop cf beans & amaranth • 1995 3000-1500 = 1500 profit

96

Local Brinjal

Stop • Pest attack leads to loss of entire crop in second season • Price falls from 4-5tk/kg 1995 to 1.5-2tk/kg in 1996

97 Start • Suggested by BS who saw L in field • 12 mds income: 3000-2000 = 1000 use to buy rice each week

00

Improved country bean Cut

back • Output falling – not good to cultivate one crop continuously

02 Start • Suggested by BS • 12 mds income: 6000-3000 = 3000

03

Improved Brinjal

Stop • 1995-6 suggested not to cultivate in successive seasons

03

Start

• New local variety suggested by BS and other farmers • Tasty, high yield and return • Received training from HADS

04

Coriander

Stop

• Soil fertility declining with less organic matter • Plus late rains lead to low production Yield 2 mds • Cost/return (with red am) 1000-1300??= -300

03 Start • New variety introduced

04

Improved red amaranth Stop • Yield 8 mds.

• Otherwise as for coriander

04

Start

• Cntry bean(6md) redam(6.5) bottle gourd(2)brinjal(3)onion(20k) • Received training from HADS • Expected yields in brackets above • Overall expects 8000-5000 = 3000

05

Integrated Cultivation (1)

Stop • Will keep part of land fallow

04 Integrated (2) Start

• Will continue with 2/3 high value crops • Price is increasing because of rising population

• The most recent mixed cropping regime was also inspired by HADS but will not

be continued after this year because of the need for a fallow period. When cultivation resumes, Liyakot intends to focus on 2-3 higher value crops.

(Figure 5.11 and Annexe Figures 5.9 – 5.11 provide further details.)


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5.10.3 Management and information The strategy almost throughout has been to market 75-80% of output whilst retaining the remainder for home consumption. The continuing stream of income is important as a means of meeting regular expenses, especially those relating to the children’s schooling, whilst the nutritional value of vegetable consumption has been learnt from radio and other media. The slightly higher priority given to subsistence in this instance may help to explain the more stable but diversified pattern of cultivation observed. Work has generally been divided fairly evenly between hired labour and Rahima, with Liyakat himself making only a relatively minor contribution in terms of time. Liyakat plays an important part in deciding the layout of the plot, whilst Rahima looks after regular management, including seed preservation, sowing, fencing, weeding and the final part of land preparation. Liyakat deals with marketing, travelling to Kalitala to sell smaller quantities and calling in a piker where larger quantities are to be sold. In addition to NGOs and the BS, who has helped him quite frequently, Liyakat relies on discussions with other farmers to help make his decisions. In addition to changing the crops cultivated from time to time, he has also sometimes changed the way in which individual crops are grown as a result of advice received from others. An example of this is the application of gypsum to the red amaranth. He is more of a taker than a giver of advice, but Rahima’s opinion is sought by two or three other women on matters such as pesticide application. Seeds are obtained from the local market when the household is unable to produce them by itself.


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6. HATPARA 6.1 Location and resources Hatpara is a fairly remote community, lying at a junction several miles along kacca tracks from the highway that head northwards from the district headquarters of Thakurgaon. As the name suggests, it serves as a market centre for the surrounding area. As well as the bazaar that provides the focal point, it has a post office, a secondary school, a madrassa, an orphanage, a prayer field, a BRAC school and a small rice mill, most of which were established in the 1980s and 1990s. The land is mainly sandy loam and is of a generally higher elevation than the rice growing communities considered in Sections 3 and 4 above. The highest portion, immediately surrounding the centre and the homesteads, accounts for about 10% of the total area. This gives way on either side of the track to a much more extensive area of medium high land, which is bordered in turn to the extreme south by a much smaller somewhat lower area, covering some 5% of the total. The eastern boundary of the community is formed by a dried up river bed (see Figure 6.1). 6.2 Kinship and class There are 77 households, all of which are Muslim. Like all of the other communities studied, Hatpara is dominated by a lineage descended from the original inhabitant; an individual who seems likely to have arrived in the area around the beginning of the twentieth century (see Annexe Figure 6.1). His direct descendants through the male line now form a cluster of 19 households and include the wealthiest inhabitants, although none enjoy large land holdings, and tend rather to rely upon business and employment outside the community as the mainstay of their livelihoods. Connected to this core are a further six mainly poor households descended from the daughter of the original settler and nine on average slightly better off households, descended from the father-in-law of his son. Beyond this grouping, the community displays an unusually high degree of fragmentation, which appears to reflect its function as a recipient of the sons of surrounding para, where land has become scarce. Three such lineages (II, III and IV on Figure 6.2) themselves stretch back 3-4 generations and appear fairly well established. Shabge has recruited most of its full membership from amongst this group, although many members of the older lineage have since become buddy members. Others households (belonging to lineages V – IX) have come far more recently, and contain a predictably high proportion of the poorest households. The community also differs from those discussed earlier in that several men have married women from other member households, and that some outside men have married in. Taken together, these factors mean that many adult women share the dense patterns of kinship links and social capital that is elsewhere the more exclusive preserve of men. Using a slightly different system of classification from that employed elsewhere, Figure 6.3 divides households into four classes5. Those in secure positions amount

5 The change was introduced primarily to address an anomaly where some of the richest households, who relied on non-land based assets, were being classified in the poorest category (a situation encountered for the first time in this study). This leaves the lower categories more or less as they are in the BBS system used elsewhere, with “C” here


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to only 6.5% of the total, which is by some way the smallest proportion for any of the communities studied. The proportion of marginal (at 34%) and landless (31.5%) are correspondingly greater than elsewhere. Figure 6.1: Hatpara. Land types and current cropping patterns

Poy

sh

Mag

h

Falg

un

Cha

ittra

Boi

shak

Jais

tha

Ash

at

Shr

abon

Bha

ddra

Ash

in

Kar

tik

Agr

ahay

n

Land height and soil type

% o

f are

a


A High Sandy loam 3 Jackfruit, betal, mango

B

High Sandy loam 8

Leafy vegetables

Beans, brinjal, onion, coriander

Leafy Vegetables

C Med. High Sandy loam 7

Leafy vegetables

Beans, brinjal, radish Leafy Vegetables

D Med. High Sandy loam 28 Wheat Amon Wheat

Water melon E

Med. High Sandy and sandy loam

48

Pot.

or Maize

Potato

F Low

Sandy

5

Pot.

Maize

Potato

G Low

Sandy loam

1 Sw.

Pot

Maize

Sweet Potato

Rainfall


corresponding closely to the BBS “D”, and the “D” used here corresponding exactly to the BBS “E”.


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Figure 6.2: Hatpara lineage, class and FFS membership by household

Other lineage of 3-4 generations (21) Small more recently arrived lineages (12)

II (7)

IV (6)

V (5)

VI (2) VII (2) VIII (2)

IX(1)

I1 Desended from Nunu Md (son-in-law of original) (6)

I3 Descended from father of Khazim’s

third wife (9)

A. Descended from original inhabitant (25)

I2 Descended from Najar Ali (son of original, brother-in-law of Nunu) & his son Khazimuddin (19)

C

D C E

EE

E

B

C C C C C C

C C C C C

D

E E E E

D

C

E

E E

E E

B B

C

C C

E E

E E

III (8) B

B C

C

C

E

E

C C

C D

DD

C

C

E

E C

E

D

E D

C B

E

C E E

E E

Medium

FFS buddy

FFS member

Landless

Marginal

Small

D C

B D C


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Figure 6.3: Hatpara: households by class

Category Definition No. %

A Secure/surplus producers

Owns 4+ acres and/or large business and/or professional employment 5 6.5

B Vulnerable land owners Owns 1-4 acres and/or leases in > 1 acre 22 28.0

C Marginal farmers and tenants Owns or operates 0.05 – 0.99 acres 26 34.0

D Landless Owns < 0.05 acres 24 31.5

Total 77 100

6.3 Agricultural development Although it is likely that the area has been settled for more than 100 years, it is only in the last 25 that agriculture has begun to develop beyond a very basic level. Prior to that, three main types of cultivation were taking place6: • On the high and medium high land sandy loam soils surrounding the bari, which

accounted for some 15% of the total land area, a range of local varieties of vegetable were grown. Poorer people tended to favour leafy varieties, especially napa shak, babri shak, Indian spinach, red and green amaranth, whilst the rather better off were more likely to grow gourds or “fruit” varieties such as brinjal and ladies finger (see figure 6.1 for further details).

• On the slightly lower land, with rather higher loam content, which made up a

further 28%, local varieties of amon were grown. • This left the slightly sandier land at the same elevation, which made up almost

half of the total area, where some bitter gourd, chilli and local mustard were grown, but much of which simply remained fallow.

The 1980s saw significant changes (see Annexe Figure 6.1). The first and was the arrival of HYV varieties of amon, and the introduction of a HYV winter wheat crop, which together provided the basis for a new and more productive system of cultivation on the loamier land with the better capacity to retain water. This new rotation took progressively firmer hold during the 1990s, and by contrast with other para studied, local varieties of amon have now been almost completely eliminated. Other key changes began to take place during the 1980s on the sandier soils which had previously largely lain fallow. On one part of this area, a local company

6 The typology that follows is based on figure 6.1 which is a simplified version of a more complicated reality. The para land cannot actually be divided so neatly into discrete categories, and there is considerable scope for overlapping at the margins. For example, certain areas have been used both for potato and for wheat, and others for both potato and vegetable, even those they are presented in the figure as if they were mutually exclusive. The account also leaves out the more minor land use associations that appear in the figure.


70

encouraged farmers to begin cultivating sugar, a development that was later to be re-enforced by an intervention undertaken by the Grameen Bank, which started working in the para during the decade (see Section 6.4 below for further details). On another part, a small number of farmers began growing local varieties of potato. These developments were to pave the way for further intensification of production in the 1990s and beyond, which was initially driven largely by more progressive farmers from Kuapara in Nager Union, which lay just across the river. All of the available land in their own community had by that time been taken, and they came in search of extra areas to take in lease (kush). Hatpara inhabitants were not yet aware of the potential for higher returns and initially the incomers were able to secure long term leases on what were to prove very favourable terms. With these in place, they were then able to introduce a series of highly significant changes that had already begun to take hold in their home community. The first was the cultivation of water melon. To start with, local varieties were grown and marketed for a modest profit in Thakurgaon, but production received a major boost following the appearance of HYVs a little later in the decade. With the application of chemical fertiliser and pesticide, these offered much greater yields and returns and now account for about 70% of all production. While this was happening, maize was also being introduced as an alternative early monsoon crop. Beginning with an experiment conducted by one or two farmers in the middle of the decade, this had become firmly established by the end of the decade. This expansion was again aided in part by the increasing availability of HYVs, which in this instance now cover 60% of the total area cropped, and received additional impetus through the growing availability of power tillers for land preparation. During the same period, similar changes were taking place with the winter vegetable crop, with new varieties offering both higher yields and a shorter growing season, and profitability further enhanced both by increasing availability of STWs and by the arrival of cold storage facilities at the bazaar in the early 1990s, following the establishment of an electric power connection a few years earlier. The combined effect of these advances in water melon, maize and wheat was the almost total elimination of the sugar crop by the end of the 1990s.

The final element in the transformation of agriculture in the para is provided by important changes in vegetable cultivation that again first took hold in the 1990s and assumed increasing significance from 2000 onwards. On the supply side, these have been driven by a series of initiatives. Starting with Grameen, HADS, BRAC and the DAE, and more recently accelerated through Shabge, these have taken a number of forms. In part it has again been a question of substituting local varieties with HYVs, most notably in the case of some of the leafy vegetables and gourds (see Annexe Figure 6.2). At the same time, several new species have been introduced (again see 6.2), and improved techniques of cultivation, such as the use of beds, have been promoted as well. (For a fuller discussion of the types of thing that have been involved here, see the discussion under Chakaldi in Section 5.4 above).

Equally important has been the surge in demand consequent upon the opening of the Jamuna bridge shortly before the turn of the decade and the improved access to the Dhaka market this has afforded. In particular, substantial quantities of babri shak, bati shak, and sweet gourd are now grown on a commercial scale.


71

The bridge has had an even greater effect on maize, water melon and potato production. Together with the various technical changes that have been described, this has lead to a very step increase in leases. As recently as 2000 a three bigha plot could be obtained for a five year term for BDT 1,000 per year. Currently the same price would be charged for a single bigha, an increase of 300% in only four years, and now nearly all land is either owner cultivated or leased to other farmers from within the para.

The stories that follow elaborate particular aspects of these broad changes in more detail. The first (Section 5.4), explores the history of a single plot over the last twenty years, whilst two more (5.5 – 5.6) retrace the farming experiences of two women Shabge members.

Figure 6.4: Ranking of non-cereal crops by economic status of household

Priority Better off Priority Poorer

1 Potato (a) 1 Napa shak (b) 2 Maize 2 Babri shak (b) 3 Water melon 3 Indian spinach (pui shak) 4 Radish 4 Red amaranth (lal shak) 5 Sugar 5 Green amaranth (data shak) 6 Brinjal 6 Coriander leaves (dhania pata) 7 Data (b) 8 Kankong (kalmi shak) 9 Bati shak (b) 10 Jute leaves (pat shak)

(a) Cardinal and Diamond varieties are the most popular (b) No English name can be identified

Other lower ranked vegetables mentioned by poor people included: ladies finger (dherosh), ash gourd (chal koomra), bottle gourd (lau), ridge gourd (?), vat karala, and cucumber (shosha).

6.4 How a Grameen Bank intervention in Hatpara triggered a process of innovation A plot of land some 3 bighas in area had been laying vacant in the middle of the village for about 30 years. The owner, an absentee landlord, could see no use for it. Seeing that it had potential, the Grameen Bank took out a lease on it 1990. Sugar cane was cultivated and a very good profit obtained. Apart from the crop itself, there proved to be a good market for the straw, which could last for 8 –10 years for roofing (compared to two years for paddy straw) and could also be used for fuel. The arrangement lasted for two years, and seeing what had been achieved the owner then decided to continue cultivating the crop himself. But he lacked experience and failed to apply the correct amounts of fertiliser and pesticide. As a result a heavy loss was incurred, and after two years he gave up. The land then


72

remained fallow until 1999, by which time it had become covered with weeds and bushes. At this point, seeing what had been accomplished on similar land in the area, a small farmer and a landless man named Fazlur Rahman and Nazmul Hossain, who had previously specialised in contract sugar cultivation, approached the landlord and negotiated a kush lease. This enabled them to cultivate the land for five years for a sum of BDT 5,000. By triple cropping potato, radish and tomato they were able to make a very good profit, which was sufficient to cover the entire cost of the lease in the first year. Seeing this success, many other villagers have followed suit. As a result, kush arrangements have become much more expensive than hitherto. Typically people are now paying BDT 1,000 per bigha season, compared with BDT 1,000 per year a short time ago. 6.5 Lutfa case study Lutfa is a 34 year old divorced Muslim woman. She has daughters aged 10 and 7 and lives with her elderly mother, her sister Anu and her sister’s husband in Hatpara. She was a Shabge group member from 2001-2. Her life has been hard but she has been very resourceful. Her story challenges assumptions that are commonly made about women’s roles and shows how it may be possible to promote the livelihoods of very poor women through agriculturally based interventions. Lutfa was born in Hatpara in 1970. Her father was a small farmer with an acre of land. She has a younger sister and one brother, to whom she does not refer, and who would therefore not appear to play an important part in her story. 6.5.1 Early years She did not go to school. From the age of 11, she started to help on the family farm, and her contribution was soon to become significant as her father aged and became less able to work himself. Initially, she would carry snacks to him in the field a kilometre or so away from their home. Next she began to help him with weeding. She would also help her mother to weed the vegetable patch by the house and to thresh the mustard crop. Her other responsibility was to look after the goats, finding places for them to graze and gathering sugar cane leaves for them to eat. By the age of 14, she was working in the field on a more regular basis, planting the crops and looking after the seeds and other inputs. At the same time, she assumed responsibility for the family cow, taking milk to sell at the local market and then returning with small purchases of pulses and rice. 6.5.2 Working her husband’s land Lutfa married when she was 17. Her father sold 50 decimals of his own land to provide a dowry of BDT 12,000. Her husband, Zabed Ali, was the second of four brothers. His own father had died the previous year, leaving each son two acres. She moved to Zabed’s home in Mohesali, and in addition to the normal domestic tasks, took responsibility for seed bed preparation, weeding, harvesting and processing. At the same time, she would take in paddy for processing from other households in return for a small payment. Lutfa observed what was going on around her new home, and noticed the land creeping variety of sweet gourds growing nearby. She collected some seeds and passed these on to a friend living in a para near her father’s home on a return visit. She claims that initial attempts at cultivation


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proved successful, and that this was subsequently to lead to the spread of the crop to many surrounding communities and villages. Although her husband had more resources than her father and Lutfa appeared to have married well, she soon discovered that he was a gambler who frequently lost money. Soon after they married he had to start selling his land to cover his debts. A deteriorating situation then became worse when her first child was born and died from hepatitis. Lutfa blamed Zahed for neglecting her and taking no responsibility for the baby and decided to return to her father’s house. She was now 19. With no resource of her own, she was obliged to labour, finding work on nearby farms. Her main employer was a neighbour, Intazul, from whom she learnt a number of new skills. During this period, she also helped out at home. 6.5.3 Labouring after a decline in family fortunes Things took a further turn for the worse in the following year when her father fell seriously ill. The remainder of the family land was sold to meet medical expenses but he died soon after. For the next two years, she continued to labour, whilst attempting to look after her mother and younger sister. In 1993, her sister married and went to live with her husband in the nearby village of Nargun. Shortly afterwards, her husband approached her through the Union Council Chairman to see if she would be to be prepared to come and live with him again. With no further responsibilities towards her sister, Lutfa agreed. She was now 24, and in the years that followed she had two daughters. As well as raising her children, she found regular work labouring in the farm attached to a nearby sugar mill, preparing seedlings, transplanting, applying fertiliser and watering the crop. During this period, her husband continued to gamble and lose his land. At one point he became involved in the theft of some assets, but even this was insufficient to help and by 1997 they were left with nothing. 6.5.4 Working for an NGO Taking her daughters with her, Lutfa now left her husband for a second time, although she was not finally to divorce him until 2001. Once again, she went back to Hatpara, where she joined with her sister, who had also returned, bringing her husband with her. Lutfa then found employment from 1997-8 as a labourer with HADS, a local NGO, on their seed farm, during which time she received some training from the officer in charge. Through her association with HADS she became aware of poor people’s rights to khas land, and was able to identify five acres near to her home, but when these came to be distributed, powerful residents were able to manipulate the process to their own advantage and she ended up with nothing. Through her experience with HADS, Lutfa also became aware of the potential for cultivating yard long bean (YLB). She obtained a small number of seeds for her aunt, Afiza, who was herself later to become the local extensionist under the CARE FFS. In the first year, Afiza grew 35 plants on 5 decimals. She was pleased with the results and has continued to grow the crop ever since. She typically makes from BDT 2-4,000 a year, and on one occasion, when she planted 19 decimals, was able to earn BDT 6,000. Lutfa claims that this has caught the attention of a number of other women in the para, who now smaller grow smaller quantities of YLB for their own consumption.


74

Figure 6.5: Lutfa time matrix Phase Key events Lives Resources Activity

Child/ Adolescent (1970-86)

70 Born (1 Brother 1 Sister)

Hatpara

Father owns 1 acre

81- Weeding, threshing, feeding livestock, milk sale, marketing

Wife (1987-01)

87 Marries Zabed

Father sells 0.5 acres for dowry Husband gets 2 acres from his father

88 First child dies as baby

Mohesali

Husband gambles, starts to lose land

Rice seedbed, transplant, weed, harvest on family land plus contract processing for others

89 Returns to father

90 Father falls ill and dies

Father’s land sold to cover medical expenses

93 Sister marries

Hatpara

Domestic work, agricultural labour

93 Returns to husband

Mother (1988-)

94-97 2 daughters born

Mohesali

Husband loses last of his land

Sugar farm worker

Single parent (1996-)

96 Returns home

Involved in re-distribution of local khas land

97-98 Works for HADS, receives training

Group leader (1999-)

01 Divorce

99 Forms own labour group

(01 CARE training)

Indepen-dent farmer (2004-)

Hatpara

04 Shares in 1 acre

Water melon cultivation


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6.5.5 Forming a labour gang By 1999, Lutfa felt sufficiently confident to begin work on her own, forming a labour gang with two other landless women from the para. This worked well, and by 2001 had expanded to eight members, including her sister. Most are wives or daughters of labourers and rickshaw pullers and one is a widow. The group operates in nearby para and villages and is able to find work for about half of the year. It is particularly busy during the boro season from February to March, and in amon between June and August. Members uproot wheat and rice seedlings and take on transplanting, harvesting and winnowing. Payment is by contract. For boro they receive from BDT 350-420 per 48 decimal bigha, depending on the age of seed bed, how dry and hence how difficult it is to uproot, and on the distance from bed to the field in which it is to be transplanted. In boro they will typically get BDT 300 per bigha for the first and BDT 500 per bigha for the second transplantation. They also do some weeding on the main crops and some potato seeding in October and November. Payment is partly in kind and partly in cash, with a meal also normally provided. The total value of the payments received range from BDT 25-45 per day, a figure that has risen significantly as the group has become established and people have come to appreciate the value of the work it can do. But returns are typically lower than those for men doing performing similar work since women must carry out various domestic tasks at the beginning and end of the day and are therefore unable to put in as many hours. The increment in payments that has been achieved is in part a function of the additional knowledge that Lutfa, as leader, has been able to acquire and apply. At an earlier stage, when she was working on Intazul’s land, she often came into contact with the local block supervisor (BS) and received advice about the cultivation of a number of different crops. In particular, she learnt about the BR11 rice variety, and when she recommended this to her employer, he followed her suggestion, and is said to have achieved a 4 maund increase in yield from a 25 decimal plot. Lutfta also became a member of the Shabge FFS when it started in Hatpara in 2001, learning a number of skills including how to prepare seed beds, pits, heaps and herbal pesticides and other modern vegetable cultivation techniques. So far, she has been unable to apply much of this knowledge directly on her own behalf, but has used it to build her reputation by advising others. She has shown one woman, Salaha, how to prepare beds for bottle gourd and leafy vegetables like red amaranth and batishak, and has advised a man named Ibrahim about onion cultivation. 6.5.6 Cultivating in her own right Her most recent enterprise, which again attests to her increasing status in the community, has involved taking out a long term lease for BDT 4,000 on a one acre plot with her sister, where they are cultivating water melon. Part of the money was raised from her labour gang income and part was raised in loans from people for whom the gang works. Intazul has also helped out by supplying some free seeds. (For a summary of Safia’s life and agricultural activities see Figure 6.5). 6.6 Afiza case study Afiza is a 34 year old woman who lives in Hatpara with her husband and three daughters.


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6.6.1 Childhood and adolescence She was born in Nargun, just across the river from Hatpara, in 1972. Few details were provided about her family, but it is apparent that her father owned some land, and probably would have fallen into the small farmer category. Afiza appears not to have attended state school but to have spent some time in a madrassa where she was able to acquire basic literacy. From the age of about eight she began to help on her father’s farm. At first she would contribute to weeding the vegetables and other crops, as well as looking after the goats. A year or two later she began to take on a wider range of tasks including repairing dikes, uprooting and transplanting seedlings, collecting fodder for the cattle, milking and selling milk in the local market. 6.6.2 Marriage and moving to Hatpara In 1989, when she was 17, she married Abu Taher and moved to live with him in Hatpara. She brought with her a dowry of two cows worth BDT 3,800, which were to play an important part in her subsequent livelihood strategy. Her husband was a small farmer, who at that time owned about an acre of land. He came from a large family and had five brothers living locally. Three had service occupations, one was a mason and one a businessman. Taher himself worked part time as a tailor. The first of her three daughters, Rokeya, arrived the next year, and was followed by Jesmin in 1992 and Khadiza in 1995. All have been sent to school. Rokeya graduated from class 10 this year, and has herself now become a BRAC teacher, earning BDT 600 per month. 6.6.3 Independent farming activities Afiza did not speak about the general work performed on the family farm but concentrated rather on the quite extensive range of activities and related transactions in which she has engaged on her own behalf. These began in 1991 when she sold some of her cattle and the calves they had produced for BDT 2,000, using the money to purchase 10 kathas of land. Half of the area was used for subsistence purposes and the other half to grow a sugar cane crop, from which she was able to obtain a profit of about BDT 1,500. Part of the land had to be sold in 1992 to cover family expenses when she had to take time of work after the birth of Jesmin. But Afiza continued to raise cattle during this period, and a few years later, in 1999, was again able to sell some off to buy anther 5 katha. Up until this point, she appears to have received no formal agricultural training, but had still built up sufficient expertise to offer advice to other women farmers in the locality. In 2000 she joined Shabge, and was chosen as the Local Extensionist in 2001. Through the FFS, she has been able to significantly extend her range of skills. She says that the most important things that she learnt have been bed preparation, pit preparation, seeding and integrated pest management, and that she is now able to cultivate yard long and country beans, red amaranth, radish and various vegetable seedlings. To take advantage of what she has learnt, she sold off all of her cattle and calves in 2001 and used the money to buy more land. As well as cultivating her


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Figure 6.6: Afiza time matrix Phase Key events Key resources Activity

80 Helps with weeding vegetables, other crops. Tends goat

Child/ Adolescnt (1972-88)

72 Born N

A

R

G

U

N

Father owns some land

82 Repairing dikes, uprooting seedlings, sowing seed. Feeds and milks cows, sells milk at market

Wife (1989-)

89 Marries Abu Taher

Brings dowry of 2 cows (cost 3800tk). Husband has 1 acre

90 Starts to advise other farmers 90 1st daughter

91 Sells cows and calves. Buys 10 katha for 2000 taka

92 2nd daughter

92 Sells 5 katha to support herself when unable to work

91 5 katha for subsistence, 5k for sugar. Grows black gram

99 Buys 5 katha by selling cows and calves

95 3rd daughter

01 Sold all cows and buys 10 katha

02 Daughter appendicitis

02 Sells tree and paddy and takes high interest loan to cover expenses

03 Taher falls sick

00 Joins Shabge. Learns and applies new skills. Passes on to others. Grows beans, red amaranth, radish and vegetable seedlings

Mother (1990-)

04 Daughter BRAC teacher

H A T P A R A

O3 Raises 5000 tk by selling milk and radish and raising loan to cover costs 04 Grows YLB, brinjal, lapa,

palong and coriander

own land, she also advises others, including two male farmers who live nearby whom she has shown how to apply fertiliser for jackfruit cultivation. 6.6.4 Experiment with yard long beans Yard long beans have been the most important crop grown. Afiza obtained a small quantity of kego nataki seeds from the Thakurgaon market and began cultivation on a 0.5 decimal area in 2001. She used NPK for fertiliser and produced 15 kg, 10 kg of which was sold for a small profit and 5 kg of which were consumed by her own family.


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Encouraged by the initial experience, she increased the area to 5 decimals in 2002. On this occasion she hired labour to help with the land preparation and changed the fertiliser used to Urea, MP and Furadan. She also fenced the area with bamboo and purchased a small quantity of pesticide. A good yield of 120 kg was obtained, of which 85 kg was sold, giving a net income of BDT 850. In 2003 Afiza switched back to NPK and increased the area to 10 decimals, but otherwise followed a similar approach. As a result, the yield increased to 320 kg and the net income to BDT 2,770. 6.6.5 Recent difficulties and developments Whilst this experiment has been going on, Afiza’s household has suffered two quite serious setbacks. In 2002, Jesmin suffered from an attack of appendicitis, and Afiza had to sell a tree and some rice, as well as taking out a high interest loan, in order to meet the medical expenses. Then, in 2003, Abu Taher fell ill. On this occasion Afiza had to meet further bills of BDT 5,000, which she managed by selling milk and radish and raising a further loan. The situation has, however, eased somewhat, with Rokeya starting to bring in money, and Afiza earning from the yard long beans and other vegetables, which include brinjal, lapa, palong and coriander. In future she anticipates that she will generate sufficient income to meet about half of the family rice requirements, together with clothes and books for her younger daughters. In addition to the benefits arising for her own household, Afiza has also been able to use her newly acquired knowledge for the benefit of others. These include her neighbour Meherun, the wife of a middle farmer, who she has supplied with seeds and advised on transplantation, fertiliser application, irrigation and other aspects of cultivation on her 5 decimal plot. (For a summary see Figure 6.6).


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REFERENCES Azad, M. Abdul Kalam et al, “Farmers innovative practices of agricultural pest management and crop production in Bangladesh: cases studies from Jessore and Bagura in Khan, Niaz Ahmed ed., Of Popular Wisdom: Indigenous Knowledge and Practices in Bangladesh, Biggs, S.D, “Informal R&D” in Ceres, 13, 1980 Brammer, H., “Some innovations don’t wait for experts: a report on applied research by Bangladesh peasants” in Ceres March-April 1980, FAO, Rome CARE Rural Livelihoods Programme, The North-west institutional analysis, Dhaka, 2002 CARE Rural Livelihoods Programme, Social capital in rural Dinajpur, Dhaka, 2003 Chambers, Robert, Arnold Pacey and Lori Ann Thrupp, Farmer first. Farmer innovation and agricultural research, Intermediate Technology Publications, London, 1989 Chapman, G.P, The folklore of the perceived environment in Bihar, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, (mimeo) Department of Agricultural Extension, The new agricultural extension policy, Dhaka, 1999 Foucault, M, “The order of discourse” in R. Young ed, Untying the text, a post-structuralist reader, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971 Khan, Niaz Ahmed ed., Of Popular Wisdom: Indigenous Knowledge and Practices in Bangladesh, The University Press Limited, Dhaka, 2000 Long, Norman and Magdalena Villareal, “The interweaving of knowledge and power in development interfaces” in Scoones, Ian and John Thompson, Beyond farmer first. Rogers, E, Diffusion of Innovation, The Free Press, Glencoe, UK, 1983 (third edition) Scoones, Ian and John Thompson, Challenging the populist perspective: rural people’s knowledge, agricultural research and extension practice, Institute of Development Studies Discussion Paper 332, December 1993 Scoones, Ian and John Thompson, Beyond farmer first. Rural people’s knowledge, agricultural research and extension practice, Intermediate Technology Publications, London 1994 Shah, Wajed A and Salina Jahan Nuri, “Local vegetable seed storage methods and women’s participation in development” in Sillitoe, Paul, Indigenous Knowledge Development in Bangladesh Sillitoe, Paul, Indigenous Knowledge Development in Bangladesh, The University Press Limited, Dhaka, 2000


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Sillitoe Paul, “Cultivating indigenous knowledge on Bagladseh soil: an essay in definition” in Sillitoe, Paul, Indigenous Knowledge Development in Bangladesh, 2000(b) Sillitoe, Paul, “Some comments on science, indigenous knowledge and the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh” in Sillitoe, Paul, Indigenous Knowledge Development in Bangladesh (2000c) Sumberg, James and Christine Okali, Farmers’ experiments. Creating local knowledge, Lynne Rienner, London, 1997

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