Annual report 1995-1996

Farming is a family affair

 

TANGAIL, BANGLADESH—The hollow clatters and creaks of the bamboo are the only noises when Mr. Abdul Halim rises in the darkness, still velvety thick. After morning prayers, he takes care of the animals and cleans the compound. Breakfast is prepared and eaten. The children go off to school. When there's field work to be done, he toils until dusk.

Mr. Halim, 62, a gray-bearded widower, has been a rice farmer for more than 40 years. He has been growing "IRRI dhan" (high-yielding rice varieties) for more than 25 of those years on his land of a little less than half a hectare.

He used to grow IR8, he says, but now he uses newer varieties: BR14 and BR16, both short-duration irrigated rices for the dry season released by the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute and derived from IRRI lines.

Five of his six children still live in his house, which is raised 2-3 meters above the field to protect it from the annual floods. Two of his children work off farm: one as a factory worker, the other in a school. The oldest daughter, who is in grade 12, would like a teaching job some day.

Working on the farm is a family affair: the sons work as laborers and harvest the rice, and the daughters do the drying and postharvest work, the traditional job of women. The daughters also help with the vegetables.

The family doesn't produce enough rice to fill the many stomachs in the household, so some rice must be purchased each year. "We can go 8 months with our own paddy," the soft-spoken Mr. Halim says. During the previous dry season, he harvested about 40 monds (1.5 tons) of rice from his meager plot.

To make ends meet, the family sells bamboo. Each piece goes for 50-100 taka (US$1.20-2.40). "I usually grow vegetables, too, but this year it was too dry," he comments. The family also has two cows. Mr. Halim lacks capital to buy fertilizer and pay for irrigation water. He often cannot grow a crop in the main wet season if the monsoon comes early.

His dream is to buy a small tube well. If he had one, he estimates that each season he could grow 10,000-12,000 taka (US$240-290) worth of vegetables, such as radish, cole crops, taro, bitter gourd, pumpkin, eggplant, and cucumber. The problem is raising the capital: a tube well costs about 12,000 taka (US$290). Even if he could sell all of his rice crop, he would only earn about 4,500 taka (US$109). "I would like to improve my pond and maybe grow fish," he adds optimistically.

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