In Bangladesh, land is still considered as an essential productive asset and means to sustain livelihood. Efficient utilization of land is important for household welfare and alleviation of poverty in a sustainable manner. In our country, like other developing economics, the poor makes productive use of family labor and improve their income and well-being.

Extreme level of poverty and high density of population are the significant causes for reduction of economic growth in our country. Although the country has rich soils and favorable climate for agriculture, it still remains highly vulnerable to devastating flood, cyclones and draughts. In a densely populated, poor and rural country like Bangladesh, higher agricultural productivity is essential for growth and poverty reduction. On the other hand, social forestry can be identified as a tool for bringing about ecological and socio-economic improvements, as well as can contribute to alleviate poverty in Bangladesh. Ecological changes refer to a greater number of trees, more “biomass” production and beneficial ecological effects.

In 1975, BEES introduced Agriculture and Social Forestry program under the RDP to facilitate the farmers to overcome stagnancy in the agricultural field through promoting crop diversification, increasing crop intensity as well as crop production. The program aimed to enhance the nutritional status of the target beneficiaries and enable them to become financially self-reliant through crop diversification. At the same time, the program was expected to bring favorable ecological balance in the environment.

Objectives

To assist the farmers and community through provision of various inputs to obtain better quality of crops and support for plantation of various trees towards establishment of sustainable environmental and ecological protection.

Achievement

Under the program, BEES targeted to work with a total of 25,000 farm families during the session July 2002-June 2003 with an expectation to increase the production by 7% at the end of the year from baseline status. Simultaneously, about 84,000 tree plants would be distributed to the farm families.

A total of 22,895 farmers constituting 1,090 groups were enrolled against the annual target of 25,000 farmers and 1,190 groups respectively, which indicates about 92% achievement in both the cases. Group formation and enrolment of members in the program were found quite satisfactory.

One of the important areas under the program is to transfer modern technology on crop production to the field through different trainings. During the reporting period, about 14,300 farmers received knowledge on different modern technologies related to crop production through 11 courses. It is to be mentioned here that, in most of the cases farmers received knowledge on more than one crop production technology.

The major agro-technologies were “Balanced Fertilizer Use”, “IPM Technology Use in Production of Rice, Vegetable and Tomato”, “Integrated Pest Management”, “Mixed Fruit Gardening”, “Pruning of Fruit Trees”, etc. During the reporting period, achievement in this field was also found quite satisfactory.

In the area of arrangement of the agricultural inputs - seed, fertilizer, pesticide, seedlings (fruits, vegetable & timber) etc. for the target farmers; about 95,000 farmers received the mentioned inputs during the reporting period. It is to be mentioned here that most of the target farmers received more than one agricultural inputs from the program.

However, among the inputs receivers, a total of 19,251 farmers received seeds of different crops, 10,025 farmers received seeds of vegetables, 8,531 farmers received fertilizers and 4,823 farmers received pesticide and a total of 12,337 farmers received seedlings of fruit, timber and medicinal trees.

Upto the end of the year, a total amount of 27.2 million taka was disbursed as crop loan among 4,179 farmers payable through equal installments. It needs to be mentioned here that BEES could not arrange sufficient fund against crop loan to the farmers as targeted under the program due to shortage of fund.

The main objective of Demonstration on Various Technologies on Crop Production was to introduce the farmers with different new technologies for cultivating land in more sophisticated way so that they can produce more crops. In this regard, a total of 582 demonstrations on different agricultural technologies were arranged at field level against the target of 650 demonstrations, which marks nearly 90% achievement and about 19,000 farmers were benefited through these demonstrations.

Among the arranged demonstrations, 163 were on “Kitchen Gardening”–the highest in number. Other demonstrations arranged by the program staff during the reporting period (2002-2003) were on ‘Preparation of compost heap’, ‘Cultivation of winter vegetable’, ‘Cultivation of Aman’, ‘Cultivation of Pulse’, ‘Process of fruit tree pruning’, ‘Green manure’ and ‘Cultivation of wheat’ and; the numbers of demonstrations were 112, 73, 58, 55, 53, 36 and 32 respectively.

It should be appreciated that all the farmers covered under the program were able to increase crop production by 7% than the last year using supports and services provided by the program staff during the reporting year.

Under the Social Forestry Component, it is seen that roughly 84,000 seedlings/saplings were distributed among the target beneficiaries against the annual target of 92,000 seedlings/saplings, which indicates more that 92% achievement. Among the distributed seedlings/saplings, 38,300 were of fruit trees, 37,832 were of timber trees and the rest 7,835 seedlings were of medicinal trees.