IFAD supports smallholder farmers with homestead vegetable gardening kits

The International Fund for Agricultural Development or IFAD and the Ministry of Agriculture have begun distributing homestead vegetable gardening kits among 26,000 smallholder farmers in coastal Bangladesh to combat the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Agriculture Secretary Mesbahul Islam inaugurated seed distribution through a virtual platform on Thursday. IFAD’s South Asia Hub Head Rasha Omar also joined the event, the organisation said in a statement.

Under its Rural Poor Stimulus Facility or RPSF, IFAD’s global response to the COVID-19 crisis, the Fund provided $915,000 to the government of Bangladesh for the kits.

“This initiative will support coastal farmers to produce more vegetable round the year. The overall vegetable production will increase and nutritious vegetable will be available in markets,” said Secretary Mesbahul.

“Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had urged everyone not to leave even an inch of land uncultivated. In that spirit to attain food security for every person in the country, the ministry and the Department of Agricultural Extension are working to facilitate support for the farmers to carry out agricultural activities,” he added.

The government has started supporting 32 gardens in every Union Parishad, and planned to increase the homestead gardens to 100 in every Union, according to him.

Bangladesh was among the first countries to apply to the RPSF, to get the funding and it is the first country to implement it, said Rasha Omar of IFAD.

This initiative directly contributes to two objectives of the government, she said. Firstly, to avoid the coronavirus-induced health crisis becoming a food crisis, and secondly, Hasina’s vision to ensure that no land remains unproductive, said Rasha Omar.

“Women are the keepers of good variety seeds for households and keepers while ensuring nutrition for the family,” she said, praising the project’s approach of ensuring woman farmers’ participation in the distribution of the kits.

She also said the programme will contribute a long way to the improved nutrition of the households and will lay down the foundation for agricultural intensification and promotion of high value crops in line with the orientation of the Ministry of Agriculture.

The RPSF was launched in April 2020 to support farmers and rural communities to continue growing and selling food, and the HVG kits are being distributed to the smallholders to ensure timely access to input, information, markets and liquidity.

IFAD’s Country Programme Officer for Bangladesh, Sherina Tabassum, said the Bangladesh country programme is one of IFAD’s “most agile programmes”.

The quick action from the Ministry of Agriculture starting from making the immediate request for funding from RPSF to distributing the seeds on time to the farmers is “highly commendable”, she said.

“We hope that the production of nutritious food in home gardens will continue beyond this project’s intervention. The capacity-building support for targeted households will generate local knowledge, especially on nutrition, and this will encourage adoption by other households that are not directly supported.

“The vegetable garden will increase households income, which in the long run will enable the smallholder farmers to invest in procuring inputs for future cultivation,” Tabassum added.

Smallholder farmers of Patuakhali, Barguna and adjoining districts will receive seeds, fertilisers, and tools, along with capacity building support, for high value and nutrient rich homestead vegetable gardening.

Md Asadullah, Director General, DAE said the recipients will also be trained and advised on utilising the input so that they can produce at least 40 kilograms of vegetable from each homestead garden at the end of the season.

This will contribute to the total production of vegetable in the country and intake of vegetables in daily meal, he said.

The HVG kits will ensure enhanced nutrition through dietary diversity, increased incomes of poor and vulnerable households, and availability of nutritious produce in local markets.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to threaten the lives and livelihoods of the world’s most vulnerable people, the IFAD-financed Smallholder Agricultural Competitiveness Project (SACP) received the additional funds from RPSF in September 2020, making Bangladesh the first country to roll out the RPSF initiative in the Asia and the Pacific Region.

Each micro-gardening kit contains 12 kinds of high quality vegetable seeds, including spinach, red amaranth, carrot, radish, cauliflower, bitter gourd, and beans; a set of seven recommended fertilisers; nets for fencing; and a 6-litre watering can. The quantities of the input are sufficient for cultivating an average of 12.50 decimals of an acre.