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 Irrigated Rice Research Consortium
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Easing the plight of the hungry in Bangladesh
The travel from Dhaka to Rangpur in Bangladesh takes about 7 hours by a road that gradually gets rougher as you approach your destination. In the course of that long journey, you get a feel for the exotic nation that is Bangladesh. As you leave the crowded urban streets of Dhaka, you are greeted with shocking images of makeshift tents in between trees and on the ground, just along the highway. Nearing Rangpur, there are whole communities made of tin houses. And in villages in Nilphamari and Kurigram, families live in thatch huts, most of them without electricity or plumbing. These are the homes of Bangladesh’s many poor people. About 20% of the population in Bangladesh —more than 20 million ultra-poor people—suffers from severe hunger each year. Life gets harder though for the rural poor in northwest Bangladesh from late September to mid-November, because they face a yearly famine called monga. During these months, many cannot afford to eat three times a day, often even struggling to have one decent meal. The hardship at this time of the year is because most of the people who rely on farmwork in the greater Rangpur districts are jobless, waiting for the harvest of transplanted rice in December. By the time the monga season comes, they have consumed all of their stored food and do not have any opportunities for work. Most of the men migrate to cities to find work such as pulling rickshaws and transporting bananas and logs, but these prospects are few and they also offer low wages. Oftentimes, families buy livestock and poultry before the monga comes and sell them during these trying months. Even 8- to 12-year-old children are sent to work for landowners. Boys receive about US$28 and food for a year in exchange for hard labor in the fields. The girls, who are allowed to do only household chores, are given only food. It does not help that northwest Bangladesh is transected by 21 rivers that regularly change course and leave thousands of families homeless. Floods usually arrive in August and September, just before the monga season. The plight of the people, often already sick with diarrhea and other illnesses, is worsened due to starvation during monga. To help ease the hardship during monga and improve farm productivity, the Irrigated Rice Research Consortium (IRRC), Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), and local nongovernment organizations (NGOs) have teamed up to develop the means for earlier harvests through shorter-duration rice varieties combined with direct seeding of rice (DSR) and weed control options. Dr. David Johnson of the IRRC Labor Productivity Work Group and Dr. M.A. Mazid, head of the BRRI Rangpur station, have been working closely with farmers to test the potential of DSR as an alternative to transplanted rice in different cropping systems. DSR allows the crop to be harvested 9 to 10 days earlier and raises the chances for farmers to grow a second crop such as potato, maize, mustard, wheat, chickpea, or vegetables. People can also explore other livelihood opportunities and earn more income. (See Adaptive research helps fight famine in Bangladesh, RIPPLE, October-December 2007.)
The IRRC team traveled to Rangpur on 22-28 October 2007 to capture the impact of DSR in monga mitigation. Dr. Florencia Palis, IRRC socio-cultural anthropologist, conducted focus group discussions (FGDs) among farmers and landless men and women in Rangpur, Nilphamari, and Kurigram districts. One grief-stricken widow in Nilphamari said that her “life was miserable and useless because she had no work and no land to work on.” Left with two daughters to take care of, she could not remarry to somehow ease her burden because it was unusual in their culture and not an option. Another woman had gotten into a “spiral of debt” after borrowing from several NGOs to pay for each previous debt. Hope still remains for such landless women though, as they formed a group to develop incomes during the monga period. They borrowed money from an NGO so that they could hire a teacher for their young children. They sold poultry and livestock and also engaged in lac production, supported by the Grameen Artto Unnayan Sangstha (GAUS), an NGO. Lac (Laccifer lacca) is a scale insect that secretes a resinous product, which is scraped off and sold to traders. Lac resin can be sold as dye and wax, which have great demand in the world markets of Germany, the U.S., Egypt, China, Australia, UK, and New Zealand. Almost all the lac rearers in Bangladesh are women. A further innovation has been DSR. Many farmers who have not tried DSR were eager to use the technology because they saw that their neighbors had healthy crops and good harvests. One farmer in Nilphamari was able to grow dry-sown rice and harvested about 3 tons per hectare and was also able to grow ginger; he said, “it was a miracle.” With the introduction of DSR and BRRI dhan 33, an early-maturing variety (115–118 days), farmers can harvest at least 35 to 40 days earlier, sell at a higher price, and get other jobs. IRRC agricultural economist Arelene Malabayabas trained interviewers and conducted initial household surveys. The surveys aimed to collect rice and other crop production data from 200 farmers. From the preliminary results, farmers said that the most effective ways of informing them about DSR are through television, demonstrations and training, farmers’ field schools, other farmers’ influence, and extension technicians. With the data collected from the FGDs and surveys, the IRRC can have a better understanding of how DSR and improved weed management can be extended effectively to help improve farmers’ harvests. The team also discussed the potential of DSR technology as a way to mitigate monga with government and nongovernment agencies. They met with executives of the Department of Agriculture and Extension and the district commissioner of Kurigram, who agree that planting early-maturing varieties is most vital in mitigating monga, but there is also a need for more seeds as well as training. DAE has been promoting early-maturing varieties since 2005, and direct seeding by a drum seeder to farmers, although their efforts have been hampered by recent floods. The team also met with NGOs such
as Solidarity, Inter-Cooperation, GAUS, Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service, and the
Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC). “These two technologies,
early-maturing varieties and DSR, can stagger employment generation and, to some
extent, combat monga,” says Dr. Mahabub Hossain, BRAC chief executive officer.
The work to relieve the problem of monga by enabling farmers to have earlier rice harvests still has a long way to go. Further farmer training will be undertaken this year so that farmers themselves can become trainers in the community. The IRRC team will travel down that road to Rangpur again and the jarring images of tents and thatch huts will probably still be there. But the IRRC believes that if the burden of the poor can be eased, through helping farmers make more of the natural resources, it will all have been worthwhile and indeed “a dream come true.”
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