Turning compost into food
When your farmland is turned to sand, how do you survive?
Floods don't just destroy homes, villages and lives when they arrive - they also leave a crippling legacy when the waters subside. The ‘char’ – the silted sand plains that the floods leave behind – are too infertile for even the most skilled farmer to tend. Left with no food stored for the future, no food to sell at the local market and no food even to feed their families, people once had no option but to pray that food aid would arrive at their village in time.
Rather than ‘writing off’ the land, Practical Action have been working with farmers to develop a simple and effective solution. Holes. Thousands and thousands of holes. Each no more than a metre across, dug into the sand bars, then filled with compost. Into these, farmers are able to plant seeds; from which can grow crops that the families can eat, store, even sell to make money. They can then put this money towards medicine, clothes, livestock or schooling for their children.
Video
This report on our countering flood and river erosion impacts in Bangladesh was shown on German television channel DW-TV in June 2011.
This film won the Silver Award at the Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards 2011 in the Environment & Ecology category.
Mohammed Mohazar Ali from Gaibandha in Bangladesh, was only able to earn enough to give his family of 17 one meal a day. Then we showed him how to grow pumpkins in pits on the silt island next to his village.
Three years ago we trained Mohammed and gave him some pumpkin seeds. Initially he cultivated 50 pits, he then reinvested his income and now has 1.21 hectares under cultivation. He has also bought two cows. Mohammed is able to grow about 20-25 pumpkins per pit and each one weights 20-25Kg. He now earns TK55,000 a year (£550) and is able to provide his family with three meals a day. Life is much better for him although he's always concerned about the weather.
This is a simple idea that transforms lives. Pumpkins are a perfect crop because they are extremely nutritious, last for up to a year and fetch good money at market. Help us give people the ability to turn their own future into one that doesn’t include hunger and desperate poverty. If you’re able to, please make a gift to Practical Action.
Pathways from Poverty (Shiree)
Building economic empowerment and resilience for extreme poor households in riverine areas of Bangladesh
Donor: DFID - Shiree
Duration: 2009-2012
Partners: Own Village Development (OVA), Jhanjira Samaj Kallyan Sangstha (JSKS), Uttara Development Program Society (UDPS), AKOTA, Gana Unnayan Kendra (GUK), Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC), Handicap International (HI)
The project targets extreme poor people living in 120 flood protection embankments located in four northern districts of Gaibandha, Lalmonirhat, Rangpur and Nilphamari adjacent to the Brahmaputra and Tista rivers.
The Pathways from Poverty project is part of the larger Shiree initiative funded by DFID Bangladesh. Practical Action is one of 6 NGOs awarded ‘scaling up’ contracts under the Shiree initiative, to scale up tried and tested approaches for working with what DFID terms the “ultra poor” – that part of the population currently untouched by most development initiatives.
They characterise this population as being without assets, unable to plan beyond today because of the precariousness of their income and access to food, and untouched by the institutions focussing on the poor, be they government agencies, NGOs or the micro credit institutions.
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