National Agricultural Technology Project (NATP)

IPP206

Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh

Public Disclosure Authorized

National Agricultural Technology Project (NATP)

Project Preparatory Team (PPT)

Final Report

Public Disclosure Authorized Social Assessment

Prepared by

Public Disclosure Authorized

M. Maniruzzaman Consultant, PPT Core Team

July 2006

Public Disclosure Authorized Table of Contents

Abbreviations and Glossaries i – iii Executive Summary iv - xvi

1. Introduction 1 1.1 National Policy Framework 1.2 The NATP and its Objectives and Components 1.3 Geographical Coverage 1.4 The Project Preparation Team and the Tasks under Social Assessment 1.5 Approach and Methodology

2. Beneficiary Assessment 3 2.1 Socio-Economic Profile Of Bangladesh 2.1.1 Demographic Profile 2.1.2 Spatial Variation of Poverty 2.1.3 Inequality and vulnerable middle 2.2 Profile of the Agriculture Sector 2.2.1 Ownership and Tenancy Pattern 2.2.2 Major Crops, Crop Area and Crop Production 2.2.3 Livestock 2.2.4 Fisheries 2.3 Important Land Social Indicators 2.3.1 Cross country Comparison 2.3.2 Gender Overall Situation Female Headed Households Women in Agriculture 2.4 The Study of Six Villages 2.5 Special Note on Indigenous People

3. Stakeholder Analysis 27 (a) Stakeholder Mapping, (b) Expectations, Issues and Concerns

4. Historical Contextualization - 30 Lessons Learnt form Similar Projects

4.1 General Description a. Ten projects involving IDA assistance b. Field Experience of IFAD assisted Smallholder Agriculture Improvement Project (SAIP) in Mymensingh region c. Field Experience of IDB assisted Smallholder Project in Barisal region d. Fourth Fisheries Project (FFP) e. Experience of Technology Transfer by Local NGO, GUP f. Hortex Foundation g. BRAC h. PETRRA Sub Project for Resource-Poor Farm Households 4.2 Lessons Learnt

5. Present Agricultural Research and Extension Systems 41 5.1 Research

a. Current Status of Agricultural Research Systems b. SWOT Analysis of Research Systems 5.2 Extension a. Agriculture b. Livestock c. Fisheries d. SWOT Analysis Extension Systems

6. Issues of Significance 49 6.1 General Issues 6.2 Issues Relevant to Agricultural Research Systems 6.3 Issues Relevant to Agricultural Extension Systems

7. Project Design Elements for addressing the Issues of Significance 57

7.1 General Issues 7.2 Research Component 7.3 Extension Component

8. Social Safeguards 61

8.1 Introducing Social Safeguards 8.2 Legislative Framework 8.3 NATP Social Safeguard Management Framework 8.4 NATP Social Safeguard Management Plan

List of Tables Table-1: Regional distribution of population 03 Table-2: Incidence of Headcount Poverty, 1991-92 and 2000 04 Table-3: Poverty by Administrative Divisions 2000 04 Table-4: Pattern of Land Ownership 05 Table-5: Tenancy Pattern 06 Table-6: Crop Area, Total Production and Yield in Bangladesh 06 Table-7 Livestock holdings in Bangladesh, 1996 07 Table-8: Area and Production of Fish by Type of Fisheries 08 Table-9: Cross Country Comparison of Social Indicators 09 Table-10: Gender Differentiated Economic and Social Status 11 Table-11: Village Fedainagar, Patuakhali, 15 years ago and now 15 Table-12: The salient features of five villages 20 Table-13: Districts with concentration of Tribal Population 26 Table-14: List of Stakeholders at the National to Village Levels 27 Table-15: The stakeholders and the major issues and concerns 28 Table-16: Experience of executing projects in the last three decades 30 Table-17: Outcomes against specific objectives of IDA supported agricultural projects 31 Table 18: Agricultural Research Institutes at a glance 40 Table-19 SWOT Analysis of the Research Systems 42 Table-20 SWOT Analysis of Extension Delivery Systems 47 Table 21: Institutional Constraints and Suggested Remedial Measures 59 Table 22: Indicative Screening Matrix in Social Safeguard Management 65 Table 23: Probable Effects and Mitigating Measures 66 Table 24: A tentative List of M&E indicators 69 List of References 71

Abbreviations and Glossaries

Acre Unit to measure land, 2.47 acre= 1ha ADB Asian Development Bank Adibasi Indigenous people AFO Assistant Fishery Officer Agr. Agriculture AI Artificial Insemination AIS Agriculture Information Service Aman Crop grown during August-December ARI Agriculture Research Institute ARPI Agriculture Research Project I ART Agricultural and Rural T raining ASSP Agricultural Support Services Project ASIRP Agricultural Services Reform and Innovation Project ATI Agriculture Training Institute Aus Crop grown during April-July BARC Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council BARD Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development BARC Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council BARI Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute Baor Large water bodies, usually abandoned river channels BAU Bangladesh Agricultural University BBS Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics Beel Low -lying flood plain area but not as big as haor BEES A local NGO BFDC Bangladesh Fisheries Development Corporation BFRI Bangladesh Forest Research Institute Bigha Local unit to measure land area, 3 bigha= 1 acre BINA Bangladesh Institute for Nuclear Agriculture BJRI Bangladesh Jute Research Institute BLRI Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute Borga Sharecropping arrangement between landowner and farmer Boro Crop grown during February-April BRAC Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, a Nationa l NGO BRDB Bangladesh Rural Development Board BSRTI Bangladesh Sericulture Research and Training Institute BRRI Bangladesh Rice Research Institute BS Block Supervisor BSB Bangladesh Sericulture Board BSRI Bangladesh Sugarcane Research Institute BWDB Bangladesh Water Development Board CBO Community Based Organization CERDI Central Extension Resources Development Institute CGP Competitive Grant Program Chasi Peasant CHT Chittagong Hill Tracts CIG Common Interest Group DAE Department of Agriculture Extension DANIDA Danish Development Agency DFID Department for International Development of UK

DFIDB Department for International Development of UK Bangladesh Office DLS Department of Livestock Services DOF Department of Fisheries ERP Extension and Research Project FAO Food and Agriculture Organization FEF Field Extension Facility FFP Fourth Fisheries Project FFW Food for Works FINA Farmers Information Needs Assessment FRI Fisheries Research Institute GEF Global Environment Facility GDI Gender Development Index GDP Gross Domestic Product Ghani Animal-driven mustard crusher Ghat Boat landing facility GOB Government of Bangladesh Grihasth Peasant GMO Genetically Modified Organism GUP Gono Unnayan Prochesta, Local NGO HAITI Higher Agricultural In-service Training Institute Haor Low -lying flood plain area remaining under flood water during May-November HDI Human Development Index HORTEX Horticulture Foundation (A Public foundation promoting horticulture export) HYV High Yielding Variety ICT Information Communication Technology IDA International Development Agency IDB Islamic Development Bank IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development IPM Integrated Pest Management ITDG Intermediate Technology Development Group Jeepable Local roads good enough for jeep ride CARITAS An NGO KGF Krishi Gobeshona Foundation LEAF Local Extension Agent in Fisheries LGB Local Government LGED Local Government Engineering Department M&E Monitoring and Evaluation MDG Millennium Development Goal MFI Micro-finance institution, usually NGOs MOA Ministry of Agriculture MOC Ministry of Commerce MOEF Ministry of Environment and Forest MOFL Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock Monga Crisis months in Northwest Bangladesh when people have no food and no work M & E Monitoring and Evaluation NAEP National Agriculture Extension Policy NAP National Agriculture Policy NARS National Agricultural Research System NATP National Agriculture Technology Project NATPI National Agriculture Technology Project, India NGO Non-Government Organization NW Northwest region of Bangladesh ii

PETRRA Poverty Elimination through Rice Research Assistance PCC Problem Census Card PKSF Palli Korma Sohayak Foundation, a public funded foundation helping small local NGOs in operating micro-credit for rur al employment generation in Bangladesh PRSP Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper PGR Public Goods Research REA Revised Extension Approach RDA Rural Development Academy RDRS Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Services, a National NGO R&D Research and Development SAIP Smallholder Agriculture Improvement Project SAAO Sub Assistant Agriculture Officer SD Social Development SM farmer Small and Marginal Farmer SPGR Sponsored Public Goods Research SRDI Soil Resources Development Institute T & V Training and visit T. Aman Transplant Aman TFR Total Fertility Rate Tk. Taka – local currency of Bangladesh, 1 US $= 68 Taka TOR Terms of reference TTI Technical Training Institute UECC Upazila Extension Coordination Committee UEFT Union Extension Facilitation Team UFO Upazila F ishery Officer UNDP United Nations Development Program UP Union Parishad (Elected local government in rural Bangladesh) Upazila Sub-district: Local administrative unit in Rural Bangladesh VEA Village Extension Agent VGD Vulnerable Group Development VGF Vulnerable Group Feeding VO Village Organization

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Executive Summary 1. Introduction

The principal goal of Bangladesh’s economic policy is to reduce poverty. Although considerable progress has been achieved in the fight against poverty, Bangladesh has still long way to go if the millennium development goal (MDG) of reducing poverty to about half of the 1990 level by 2015. This requires annual economic growth rate of 6 to 7 percent on a sustained basis and the bulk of the growth must come from the agriculture sector.

Within the broader framework of poverty reduction strategy, the National Agricultural Technology Project (NATP) is proposed to be undertaken by the Government of Bangladesh (GOB) and the World Bank with the following development objectives:

a. Strengthen the national agricultural technology system, b. Increase productivity, c. Accelerate and diversify production systems, and d. Enhance market opportunities and market linkages, especially of small and marginal producers of high value commodities .

The proposed NATP comprises the following three main components:

a. Agricultural Research Support b. Agricultural Extension Support c. Development of Value Chain, supporting high-value crops and value-addition.

As part of the formulation of the proposed National Agricultural Technology Project (NATP), a group of 23 national consultants were engaged to prepare a detailed report called “Project Description and Implementation Plan”. The group of consultants included a Social Scientist to make a Social Assessment of the proposed project interventions. The NATP has already produced a consolidated report incorporating the brief reports of all members. This one is the component report on the social assessment part of the NATP project preparation team.

2. Beneficiary Assessment

2.1 Socio-Economic Profile of Bangladesh

Bangladesh, the world’s most densely populated agricultural and rural society has total population of 140 million and total land area of only about 148,000 km2 indicating average density of close to 1000 people per km2. The country is least endowed with mineral resources and fossil fuel except for natural gas and recent discovery of coal. However, her main resources are land, water and people.

Conventional literacy rate (percentage of people who can read and write) is still low (50% for males and 41% for females above 7 years age in 2001) but school enrolment is nearly universal, school dropout is on the decline and gender parity in both primary and secondary schools has been achieved. It is however important to note that, low illiteracy does not necessarily mean poor knowledge, particularly in the context of the rural communities, as far as their life and livelihoods are concerned. This is because of the richness of local knowledge which can very efficiently interact with new information and ideas in agriculture.

2.2 Profile of the Agriculture Sector

Crop Sub Sector

According to Sample Agriculture Survey 2005, 59.14% of the 24.56 million rural households had farm holdings, a decrease from 66.18% of 17.8 million rural holdings as per 1996 Agriculture Census. Average agricultural land per farm household in 2005 declined to 1.26 acres from 1.50 acres in 1996. In 1996 average own land of all rural holdings was 1.14 acres which has declined to 0.90 acres in 2005.

Of the 17.8 million rural households as per the Agricultural Census of 1996, about 52.7% were functionally landless (owning no land or owning below 0.5 acre), close to 23.5% were marginal farmers who owned between 0.5 to 1.49 acres, about 22% were small and marginal farmers and only about 1.7%

were large farmers (above 7.5 acres). The functionally landless group owned about 13% of total land but less than 4% of cultivab le land. The richest 1.7%, on the other hand owned about 18% area.

While landlessness is quite high and average farm size is very low, Bangladesh agriculture is loosing about 1% cultivable land annually to make room for competing uses, mainly for homestead, urbanization and infrastructure building.

Bangladeshi farmers are basically owner operators, 66% of all holdings followed by owner cum tenants, about 24% holdings. Only about 10% are purely tenant operators most often by sharecropping terms. Of the total cultivated area of about 20.5 million acres or close to 8.3 million ha, about 80% is under owner operation and 20% under tenant operation.

Agriculture sec tor accounts for about 23% of the national GDP as of 2004, a decline from 26% in 1995. Crop sub sector is the largest contributor, accounting for 13% of the GDP in 2005, a decline from 15.4% in 1995.

Changes noticed in cropping pattern include decline of both area and production of local varieties of rice in all seasons and decline of the area of also HYV Aus. Boro HYV and Aman HYV increased in both area and production. By now, Boro HYV has become the dominant crop but yield increase in each type was nominal. Jute acreage and production decreased in the recent years while minor cereals, mainly maize, fruits and vegetables showed some increase. Despite some trend of crop diversification, cereals still dominate and account for about 82% of the cropped area.

Livestock

The sub-sector’s contribution to the national GDP is close to 3% which is 13% of the agriculture sector. The sub-sector is growing faster, close to 5% annually in the recent years (2002-03 and 2003-04) and particularly the poultry and dairy have bright prospect because of higher income elasticity of the produces (poultry meat, eggs, milk and milk products). Local market of these products is quite large and is rapidly growing.

According to Agricultural Census 1996, about 76% of the enumerated 17.8 million rural peasant holdings (grihasth) had poultry, 39% had duck 46% had cattle and 31% had goats. Across economic categories, poorer households tend to rear poultry more frequently than larger animals like cattle and buffaloes.

National statistics however do not reflect recent development of small scale commercial poultry farming. Expert opinion reveals weekly production of broiler and layer chicks of 3.5 to 4.0 million and 300,000 to 400,000 respectively. Department of Livestock Services estimates as of end 2005 showed 118,526 poultry farms with estimated stock of 92 million live birds and 61,482 dairy farms. The country had estimated stock of another 92 million birds in backyard poultry.

Until very recently, 100% eggs and poultry was produced in the backyard farms. This scenario has changed. Now-a-days most of the rural Upazila and small towns each has a few hundred poultry farms. Presently, the share of farmed egg and poultry production is rapidly increasing and that of backyard poultry is declining. Still, backyard poultry and duck rearing remained important and will continue to meet substantial part of egg and meat production. Backyard poultry sector is particularly important for providing cash income to the poor rural women.

Fisheries

The fisheries sub sector experienced massive structural change over the past three decades and this trend although slowed down is likely to continue. The sub sector grew annually between 6.8 to 10.0 percent during 1995 to 2000. The sub sector has further potential to grow as its produces have high income elasticity hence high growth of local market is foreseen. Also it has good export market provided quality assurance to international standards.

Within fisheries sub sector, aquaculture is growing faster while the shares of both inland capture fisher ies and marine fisheries have sharply declined. The scope of the NATP is to a great extent relevant to

aquaculture of fish and shrimp. Conservation of inland fisheries is another area of interest to target beneficiaries and deserves high priority.

2.3 Bangladesh’s Achievements in terms of Important Social Indicators

2.3.1 Cross Country Comparison

Human Development Report of UNDP, 2005 shows Bangladesh in the list of medium HDI countries and the country now ranks 139 among 177 nations despite many constrains. Bangladesh is not very far from India and Pakistan (HDI rank 127 and 135) with 33% lower per capita income. In several Indicators, Bangladesh is already ahead of Pakistan and is close to India. Such indexes include Gender Development (GDI), reduced population growth, Total Fertility Rate (TFR), net primary enrolment, combined school enrolment for both males and females and reducing malnutrition of children (proxied by proportion of underweight children). In several indicators Bangladesh is ahead of both India and Pakistan. These include reduced infant and under-five mortality, eliminating gender gap in school enrolment and sanitation.

2.3.2 Gender

Overall situation

Gender can be defined as culturally constructed roles and behavior of human males and females in particular societies. Nature fixes certain physical condition for males and females which are universal and determine the biological relations essential for the survival and reproduction of the species. Such roles are invariable across culture and time. In contrast, each human society defines a set of culturally appropriate norms and behavior segregated by sex, which is called gender.

Bangladeshi, more appropriately the Bangalee society is patriarchal where men and women have markedly differentiated roles and status as in most other societies. Traditionally, women are expected to stay home and devote full attention to household chores while men are expected to work outside and feed the family as breadwinner. This basic philosophy made women subservient to men.

This traditionalist view is rapidly changing and women are now taking larger roles. Women in Bangladesh are no longer confined within homestead boundary or inside veil. Currently, they contribute significantly to the household as well as to the economy. Over the last couple of decades, women’s participation in the extra-household income earning activities has changed a lot and the structure of labor force participation has changed.

In the health sector, gender gap is not only reduced, it is nearly eliminated. In 1990s, rural women had a shorter life expectancy and girl child had about 10% higher probability to die below age 5. This is reversed by the turn of this millennium.

Literacy rate of women increased faster than that of men over the last ten years. But women are still lagging behind. Scholl enrolment of girls has improved tremendously and gender parity has been achieved in both primary and secondary levels. In the tertiary level also, women enrolment is increasing. Presently, a little over 25% of the University students are women. The most encouraging information is that, as high as 42% of the Medical students are women, an increase from 34% only 6 years ago.

Besides increasing enrolment of girls at all levels, proportion of female teacher is continuously increasing. By now, it is 35% in the primary level, 19% in the secondary level and 16% in the University level. It is very encouraging that, 21% of the medical teachers are women.

Female Headed Households Maniruzzaman (1999) found 7.5% and 10.2% female headed households in two Dhaka slums in areas with 558 and 540 households. Female headed households are much lower in proportion in the rural areas.

Quick surveys during this social assessment in six villages found only about 3 to 5 percent female headed households. Maniruzzaman (2000) in another study in rural Mymensingh found only 3 female headed households in a communit y of 93 households.

Women in agriculture

In the agriculture sector, women’s role in rice and other crop production, particularly in post-harvest and seed preservation remains sizeable and their involvement in fisheries and livestock is expanding. In the past, women’s involvement in these sub sectors was limited to very subsistence level like backyard poultry. Now it has expanded to commercial poultry and aquaculture, beyond homestead ponds.

Given these, the project recognizes that the women participation is crucial to the success of the project since addressing gender issues will result in benefits that go beyond the spheres of the project, into household livelihood improvements in particular and household food and nutritional security, in general.

2.4 The Study of Six Villages

As part of Social Assessment under the NATP preparation, a total of six villages were studied using PRA method and quick surveys in five regions of the country. The study villages represented varying geographical and socio-economic characteristics and it was not an intention to generalize the findings. For the country and administrative divisions, available secondary data were extensively used and the study villages provided evidences of similarity, variability and recent changes. The study villages are:

1. Fedainagar, Patuakhali Sadar Upazila – southern coastal, poor road network and high poverty 2. Rangtia, Adibasi village in Jhinaigati Upazila, Sherpur, Greater Mymensingh–North of Dhaka 3. Nilokhya Noya Para – char area of Bokshiganj Upazila, Jamalpur, Greater Mymensingh 4. Borabo, Palash Upazila, Narsingdi – Central region, near Dhaka, poverty very low. 5. Bhobanipour of Baroigram Upazila. Natore – Northwest, crop diversification began 6. Sujapur of Nobiganj Upazila, Hobiganj –Fishermen’s village in the northeast haor area, high poverty

Salient features of the six villages:

The salient features of the study findings are presented below along with comparison with the relevant national data to have an idea of variation across villages and difference from the latest available national figures rather than looking for new averages. For convenience of readers, district names are used in the following discussion instead of village name.

1. Accessibility: Five of the six villages have paved road either passing the village or at least touching the periphery. Only Jamalpur char village is yet to be connected to road network. This too will have road link soon, now 5 kms from regional road.

2. Population: Five villages are small to medium in area and population (100 to 300 households each) and one is big (500 households). Av. household size varied from 4 to 5.2 compared to national average of 4.9 (2001).

3. Landholding: The villages vary in terms of landlessness and land distribution patter, but none has large holdings above one to five percent. The adibasi Sherpur village has more egalitarian land distribution, only 20% functionally landless but most others own 1.5 to 7.5 acres. About 80% households in Patuakhali and Hobiganj villages are functionally landless. Landlessness is 50% in Natore and 65% in Narsingdi and they are somehow closer to national average (53% in 1996, about 60% now). Apart from the la ndless, most households are small and marginal farmers.

4. Tenancy: Tenancy is peculiar in Patuakhali where marginal holdings lease out and work as wage labor while a bit larger ones sharecrop land to make the holding more economic. In Hobiganj, those having land, nearly all cultivate and sharecropping is rare. The same is true for Narsingdi and Sherpur, where sharecropping do exist but not much. In Natore, some of the large holders, engaged in business and

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services, sharecrop out and small farmers sharec rop in. On the whole, owner-cultivation is the norm while sharecropping and mortgage still exist and this is similar to national average 80% area under owner-cultivation.

5. Irrigation: High land in Narsingdi, where mainly pineapple and jackfruits are grown is not irrigated. In Sherpur, part of the high land is also irrigated and SAIP provided hand tube well for fruits and vegetable gardening. Patuakhali has natural gravity irrigation with tide flows through BWDB inlets during Aus and Aman seasons. Nars ingdi, also has gravity irrigation facility from the surplus water of Palash power plant. Other villages, Sherpur, Hobiganj and Jamalpur mainly depend on irrigation by shallow tube wells and mainly during Boro HYV cultivation. Irrigation coverage is quite high, about 80% area and is close to saturation, except for possibility supplementary irrigation for crops other than HYV Boro.

6. Major crops: HYV boro is important in Narsingdi and Hobiganj; Local Aus and Local Aman in Patuakhali; and T. Aman in Natore, Hobiganj and Sherpur. Fruits and vegetables are important in Narsingdi, Sherpur and Natore. Mustard, spices, pulses and wheat are important in Natore; pulses and chilli in Patuakhali; Giger and Turmeric in Sherpur; and onion, sweet potato, potato, ground nut, jute along with HYV Boro, T. Aman and Local Aus in Jamalpur char. Cropping pattern appears more diversified (40% non-rice) in Narsingdi, Sherpur and Natore because of higher percentage of elevated land. Patuakhali and Habiganj have rice-dominated cropping pattern (90-95%) against national average of 82%.

7. Livestock and Fisheries: Backyard poultry, milk cow and cattle fattening are visible everywhere. Goat is important in Natore and duck in Patuakhali and Hobiganj. Open water beel fishery and river fisheries are important in Hobiganj and Patuakhali respectively while aquaculture and farmed poultry are important in Narsingdi. Habiganj and Narsingdi have potential in conservation of beel fisheries.

8. Occupation-Male: Agriculture as dominant source of income is decreasing over time. Still, 45 to 60 percent adult males are engaged in agriculture in four of the six villages- Jamalpur, Natore, Narsingdi and Sherpur. Domination of crop agriculture is low in Hobiganj and Patuakhali because of high landlessness and majority of the male labor force there are engaged in fishing and wage employment. Day laboring is very low in Narsingdi and Natore. Particularly, Narsingdi has no native rickshaw deriver and day labor. Business and services in varying degree are important everywhere while transport (mainly rickshaw) is important everywhere (except Narsingdi where most rickshaw drivers are non-local). Overseas employment appeared important only in Narsingdi. Occupation pattern in the villages, to a varying degree confirms dominance of agriculture, including fisheries and livestock and rural non farm sectors.

9. Occupation of women: In all villages except Sherpur, 80 to 95% women are engaged in household work only. Sherpur one is an Adibasi village where 100% women work in IGA in addition to normal household chores. In Narsingdi 20% women work outside but mainly in teaching, NGO services, nursing etc. but not as day labor. In Patuakhali, 20% women work outside but mainly in road maintenance or otherwise earth-cutting labor. Country average of women engaged in IGA is 12.5% (2001) and labor force participation rate is 26% (2002).

10. Poverty: By self assessment of informants, poverty appeared low in Narsingdi and Sherpur villages (20-30%), moderate in Natore (35-40%), and high in Hobiganj, Jamalpur and Patuakhali (50-60%). Poverty is a little higher than national average (49.8%) in 3 villages (ones in Jamalpur char area, coastal Patuakhali and landless fishermen in Hobiganj) and lower in three other villages ( adibasi Sherpur where both men and women work for wages, central industrial in Narsingdi near Dhaka and developing Natore having diversified crops).

10: Literacy: Male functional literacy varied from 30% in Hobiganj and Patuakhali to 53 to 65% in Natore, Narsingdi and Sherpur. Female literacy varied from 20% in Patuakhali and Hobiganj to 60% in Adibasi Sherpur and 44% in Narsingdi. Low female literacy in all villages was mainly because high illiteracy of older generation. Literacy was above national average (40% F, 50% M) in Narsingdi, Adibasi Sherpur and Natore and lower in three other villages, coastal Patuakhali, Flood-prone Hobiganj Haor and Jamalpur char.

11. Extension services: Farmer’s access to extension services is inadequate in all villages, despite improved transport network. Extension services are further constrained in the Jamalpur char village. It

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was a general picture that, farmers availed veterinary services more often than crop and fisher ies services because they value life of cattle very seriously. They often spend a few hundred taka as incidental expenses for AI service or treatment of cattle. They availed services of both veterinary quack and Upazila Veterinary Hospital or AI centre. In the case of problems in crop farming, farmers tended to approach local pesticide dealer or asked other farmers rather than seeking advice of DAE extension staff because of information gap, where the extension staff are available and when. Fisheries extens ion service is available only at the Upazila level. The DOF had a program of fisheries village to train aquaculture farmers, including women and fish pond operators in Narsingdi who got such training under the FFP. Adibasi farmers in Sherpur, both men and women, got training in horticulture crops and poultry under SAIP project. Two of the 30 farmers in Natore got DAE training and two others got extension service from Sugar Mills. Farmers in Jamalpur char were unaware of DAE extension services and extension officials also agreed that the “char villages are difficult to reach and therefore services could be weak”. There was indication that extension services suffer “in the absence of projects” because of not having any support to reach remote areas.

3. Stak eholder Analysis

The stakeholder analysis provided in the text comprises an indicative list of relevant stakeholders at various levels – national, regional, district, Upazila, Union and village. This indicates who would benefit from the project, who are likely to be affected and who are likely to shout for and against the project, often guided by group interest, rather than people’s interest. It also provides a comprehensive list of issues and concerns that affect each group, again at the national to village levels. The two matrices (pl. see full text) are prepared on the basis of literature review, experience of scientists and administrators and most importantly in the light of discussion with the primary stakeholders at the village level.

4. Historical Contextualization – Lessons Learnt from Similar Projects

A brief review the development projects implemented in the agriculture sector over the last three decades reveal that:

The donor assisted GOB projects contributed to massive infrastructure building in agricultural research, education and extension support. The early projects had large civil works, equipment, transport as well as recruitment. Later , emphasis was diverted to institutional strengthening through training, O&M support and the recent on es supported policy formulation and reforms. The GOB projects to a great extent achieved the output and outcome targets but institutional sustainability remained a major concern.

Various GOB agencies executed the early projects and later projects started involving partner NGOs for community mobilization work. Recent projects also initiated enhancing stakeholder participation and community capacity building.

A number of donor assisted projects experimented and replicated various extension methods, starting from the T&V to the present Revised Extension Approach. Discussion with scientists, educationists and extension experts revealed that mere change of approach does not help the farmers. Ensuring service to farmers require more transparent and accountable delivery system, partnership with local government, community based organizations, research-extension-farmer linkage and a one stop integrated service centre at the UP level.

It was evident that NGOs having regular program in the area have planned to continue services while those coming from other areas are closing immediately after expiry of the project contract.

A number of NGOs like BRAC have developed considerable capacity to deliver extension services, quality inputs and marketing support along with microfinance. Therefore GO NGO partnership in extension and value chain components would be fruitful.

Apart from the NGOs, a number of private companies have achieved considerable capacity in seed production, preservation and marketing. They have contract growing program. They can be effectively utilized to partner in extension and value chain components along with public sector corporations and foundations like BADC and Hortex Foundation.

A number of NGOs like Gono Unnayan Prochesta in Madaripur demonstrated that the target beneficiaries participate in the training programs even without any financial and material support like daily trainee allowance and distribution inputs like seeds and fertilizer free of cost. Farmer groups prefer selection of trainees, training time, duration and venue discussed at the field level rather than paying training allowance. They prefer buying quality inputs at reasonable price and in proper time, rather than free or subsidized inputs about the end of the crop season.

The Department of Fisheries under the Fourth Fisheries Project has developed and piloted an extension approach called Local Extension Agent in Fisheries (LEAF). DOF trained progressive fish farmers, provided them extension materials and simple tools. They are now delivering fisheries extension service to other farmers in the same village or surrounding villages. This has been accepted by the DOF as a future extension strategy.

5. Present Agricultural Research and Extension Systems

5.1 Research

National Agricultural Research System (NARS) as constituted in Bangladesh includes an apex research organization, the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) and ten Agricultural Research Institutions in the public sector. The coordinating role of the BARC in the NARS is said to be constrained due to (a) limited autonomy of the BARC Governing Body, (b) lack of authority of the BARC to channel resources to the ARIs who receive funds directly from the respective ministries, and (c) lack of explicit provisions for direct involvement of the Universities, NGOs, CBOs and private sector to participate in the NARS.

5.2 Extension

Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE)

Department of Agricultural Extension is one of the largest public sector agencies of the country with network from the national to village levels. The DAE functions as an extension agency under the Ministry of Agriculture.

As the leading organization in the agricultural extension system, the DAE has been involved in experimenting and working with a variety of extension models from the Training and Visit System (T&V) initiated in the late 1970s to Revised Extension Approach initiated in the 1990s.

The T&V was hoped to function as a two-way information sharing, extension worker delivering messages to contact farmers and having feedback from the farmers on field problems. The T&V system was designed with tremendous efforts. It could function well, should the system were accountable to people and linked to local government.

The IDA funded Agricultural Support Services Project (ASSP) introduced a new extension model, called Revised Extension Approach (REA) based on five principles; (a) responsiveness to farmers’ needs, (b) decentralization at the Upazila and block levels, (c) targeting small and marginal farmers and women, (d) using multiple extension methods – leaflets through TV program, and (e) using group approach rather than individual farmers.

Although the result achieved through the REA was stated to be “satisfactory” sustainability remained an issue and a follow up project had to be taken to continue the efforts. On the group approach in extension, the DAE still needs to institutionalize the process. Linkage with rural local government, the Union Parishad must be firmly established.

Department of Livestock Services (DLS)

The strength of DLS appeared promising as its service is highly demanded by farmers of all categories, including poor and women. It was also observed that the most farmers access DLS staff for vaccine or x

medicine because life of animal is very important to them. The weakness of the DLS is its inability to reach farmers at the grassroots on a regular basis not only because of limited manpower, but also because of limited supply of medicine, vaccine etc. and absence of operating fund to maintain cool chain facilities (thermo flasks, freeze etc.) to preserve vaccine and medicine.

Department of Fisheries (DOF)

The Department of Fisheries is nearly a century old organization established in 1908 under the Provincial Government of Bengal, Government of British India. In 1950, the Government of East Bengal enacted Fish Act, 1950 mainly aiming conservation of fisheries resources and this is still the foundation of all fisheries related acts and rules.

The DOF has outlet up to Upazila level (about 470). At the Upazila level DOF has just four staff – Upazila Fishery Officer (UFO) or Senior Upazila Fishery Officer, an Assistant Fishery Officer (AFO), a Field Assistant and an Office Assistant cum Accountant. In some Upazila, with development project, an Extension officer is added. DOF tried for quite long time to place field staff down to UP but it never materialized and is unlikely to materialize.

Weaknesses of the DOF include its staff limited to Upazila level and that too with just one Field Assistant. The strength of DOF is introducing a new extension approach called Local Extension Agent in Fisheries (LEAF) – selecting progressive fish farmers, giving them a bit advanced training, extension materials and then reaching other farmers through them.

6. Issues of Significance

6.1 General Issues a. Inclusion and equity: Agricultural intensification helped benefiting the landowners and enterprising farmers more than the landless and some of the technological interventions in the past have contributed to some degree of displacement of sharecroppers and marginal farmers. b. Pro-poor, intermediate, and women-friendly technology: Over the last three decades technological development in agriculture and rural society has to a great extent reduced women’s drudgery. These include husking mills that totally eliminated manual husking of paddy and some other crops and tube wells eliminating fetching water from long distance. But women’s involvement in threshing, poultry farming, pond aquaculture and homestead gardening has increased tremendously. These have of course benefited the rural households. Now, time has come to improve devices to clean poultry farms more systematically rather than manually only. Improving seed storage integrating indigenous practices with some modern methods can be very helpful. c. GO – NGO and Public – Private Collaboration : Agricultural technology development and dissemination are no longer limited to public sector agencies. In all areas, such as adaptive research, extension, input distribution and market linkage a number of NGOs, private companies, foundations and information media have demonstrated considerable success and own capacity building. One advantage of their larger involvement is making the services demand-led, cost-efficient and less dependent on government and thus making room for the public sector to concentrate in more fundamental areas where private sector is unlikely to participate.

6.2 Issues Relevant to Agricultural Research Systems Agricultural research systems of the country have been described briefly in Chapter 5 along with the relevant constraints. This section includes issues specif ic to the research component of the NATP. These could include but not necessarily be limited to the following: a. Effective research coordination: BARC is the apex body in the NARS responsible for coordinating agricultural research programs of the ARIs. The ten public sector ARIs belong to four ministries, MOA, MOFL, MOEF and MOC. BARC is given responsibility but they lack authority and institutional capacity to oversee the programs of the ARIs and other public and private institutes. b. Enhancing allocation of resources to agreed priorities: The agricultural research in Bangladesh suffers from inadequate and unstable funding. Funding has been unstable due to dependence on externally aided development projects. Funding is particularly unstable and too in adequate for operational expenses.

c. Need based public private partnership in agricultural research: Bangladesh agriculture is characterized by smallholder subsistence farming that limit possibility of private sector investment in research. Over the last few years, private sector business opportunities expanded in agro processing, seed industry and export of agricultural commodities. Capable private companies and NGOs are coming up and they can effectively participate in adaptive agricultural research. d. Integrate universities as part of agricultural research system: Presently agricultural research is conducted mainly by the ARIs as part of NARS while research activities of the Agricultural Universities are not effectively linked to the NARS. e. Rationalize network of institutions and substations: The ARIs have a wide network of regional research stations and substations. Many of them are reportedly inadequately staffed, less than optimally equipped and operating fund is too inadequate to regularly run research programs in all of them. It is therefore highly desirable to rationalize the substation network. It would be beneficial to make use of the campus of one ARI substation by another ARI or other institution in need. f. Human Resource Development: Human resource development in the NARS is said to be constrained with low salary structure, low scope to further research and training, particularly for the junior scientists and frequent changes in the top positions. Also, lack of institutional linkage wit h overseas institutions limits research and funding opportunities. Training programs are often limited to development projects and are not based on comprehensive and coordinated career planning. Developing comprehensive local and overseas training plan for the ARIs taken together is a felt need. g. Information, Education and Communication Campaign: Implementation of the project activities requires sharing of information with the relevant stakeholders. In the case of research components, the ARIs and other relevant organizations and individuals must be informed of the desired project interventions, the Competitive Grants Program (CGP) and Sponsored Public Good Research (SPGR).

6.3 Issues Relevant to Agricultural Extension Systems a. Transparency and accountability of the service delivery systems: Officially, the field level extension officials are accountable to the line departments through Upazila and district offices. Field level supervision is inadequate, reporting is limited to paper work and politically motivated staff unionism has further limited staff presence to occasional program days only. A transparent and accountable farmer-led public-private-NGO partnership in extension service is needed to overcome the present problems in the field level. The GOB strategy of a one stop extension service at the UP level deserves high consideration. b. Social intermediation/ community mobilization support: Social Assessment work in two of the six villages revealed that efforts to manage and conserve flood pla in fisheries could not be successfully implemented. The local communities needed administrative support and social intermediation for consensus building between conflicting communities. The NGOs in cooperation with local government can assist in the community mobilization process while the involved extension department must take the leading role to initiate and institutionalize it. c. Participation: To make sure that the diverse primary stakeholders are reached and particularly the weaker groups like the poorest farmers and women are not excluded requires enhancing their participation. Enhancing participation would require involving committed and capable local NGOs who have already demonstrated competence of working with the poor farmers and women groups. d. Elite capture: Elite capture of community based organization is a potential risk in all components but more importantly in the extension and value chain. Avoiding elite capture requires awareness of the problems and the local contexts - identify the elite, the touts, their stakes and linkages - and then act proactively. Experienced NGOs, long partnership with communities, organizing them and helping their capacity building, ensuring wide participation of the local stakeholders including the poor in the CBOs are essential from both NGO side and the executing agencies. e. Institutional Sustainability: Both GOB agencies and NGOs depend on project funding through GOB and donors. Once the project is closed, continuity suffers as funds under recurrent budget are difficult to be approved. Limited funds allocated under the GOB recurrent budget are mainly spent to pay salary, leaving nearly none to carry on the program activities.

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7. Project Design Elements for addressing the Issues of Significance

General Issues

Inclusion and inequality: One of the side effects of technology development is the wealthier groups taking advantage and marginalization of the poorer groups. Bangladesh however has some favorable conditions to benefit the poor. These include reduced domination of the landed aristocracy and marginal to small and medium farmers managing 82% of the farm area and 99.8% rural households owning at least homestead land. In addition to field crops which will benefit all categories of farmers including the poor; larger attention to home based agriculture, fruits and vegetables, horticulture nurseries, cattle, poultry and aquaculture will help benefiting the landless, poor and women. Conservation of fisheries resources will help poor fishing communities.

Intermediate technology: Encouraging intermediate technology will help minimizing displacement of agricultural labor, small and marginal farmer and will help increasing participation of female labor in various agricultural activities and reducing excessive work pressure or drudgery on women.

GO – NGO, Public – Private collaboration: The project will encourage GO – NGO, and public private collaboration in all components. In the research component, CGP will be open to all types of institutions, the ARIs, the NGOs, and the private sector and SPGR will involve mainly public sector ARIs and Agricultural Universities. The extension component will involve local NGOs to mobilize local communities, facilitating them organizing in CIGs and federating the CIGs at the UP level.

Research Component

The NATP research component aims at enhancing enhanced efficiency and effectiveness of the NARS through:

· Institutional reform by revising the Acts of BARC and ARIs , · Formulating uniform service structure and rules of business for NARS, · Developing a sustainable funding mechanism for agricultural research, · Rationalizing organizational structure, and · Improving research and resource management.

To meet the overarching need of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the agricultural technology system, a holistic approach has been proposed to support research and extension systems in the crop, livestock and fisheries sub-sectors having nation-wide coverage and critical role for enhancing agricultural growth. The main strategies of the project are to support: (a) Institutional reforms, (b) Establishment of sustainable funding mechanism for research, (c) Improvements in system management, and (d) Improving Governance.

7.3 Extension Component

For the extension component, the project proposes fully decentralized extension services of crops, livestock and fisheries sub-sectors at the Upazila level. With this aim, an Upazila Extension Coordination Committee (UECC) will be established to plan, execute, monitor and evaluate all types of extension activities. This will include preparation of Upazila extension plan for crops, livestock and fisheries by aggregating the Union Micro Plans. The Union Micro Pans will be prepared by village level common interest groups (CIGs) compiled at the UP level with the assistance of Union Extension Facilitation Team (UEFT).

In each UP, extension facilitation team (UEFT) would comprise SAAO of DAE and village level extension agent/vaccinator/LEAF/FA of the DLS and DOF. The UEFT will also include field staff of partner NGOs. Local UP chairman will be the head of the UEFT to ensure ownership of the local communities under the umbrella of elected local government. SAAO will act as the member secretary while the UP based NGO staff will act as coordinator.

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The UEFT will have an office at the UP complex or UP office. The UP chair will ensure office accommodation. This will function as one stop Farmers’ Information and Advice Centre (FIAC) which will remain open all working days during office hours. At least one SAAO will be present on rotational basis to make sure that farmer can access information and services and the office is never unattended.

The Union Micro Plans will be aggregated at the Upazila level by UECC and funds will be allocated against approved micro plans on yearly basis separate for each sub sector. The project will disburse funds on yearly or crop season basis well ahead of time according to resources available from the project and other sources like Upazila block grants for the agriculture sector.

Considering the problems of delays in fund release and finalization of the approval process, the project will advance fund to the extent of 50% of the yearly approved budget to the UECC segregated to three sub sectors and the officer in charge of the sub sector will draw the advance, execute sub sector level activities and report half yearly basis on the execution of the programs and adjust earlier advances before release of the next advance.

The Upazila head of the sub sector will be responsible for drawing and disbursement as well as physical and financial reporting. But expenses needed at the UP level will be given to the UEFT so that they can execute the program with overall guidance of the sub sector level drawing and disbursing officer.

8. Social Safeguards

8.1 Introducing Social Safeguards

The NATP project components and activities are unlikely to adversely affect any disadvantaged group through research in harmful technologies or crops. The project design is such that the r esearch priorities will be determined at the NARS through effective consultations with the relevant stakeholders to ensure that the researches are “need based”. Still, there remains some concern as the likely outcome of the research interventions can not be clearly predicted before the research is actually undertaken.

The extension activities are very participatory in nature, to be planned at the village level and consolidated at the Upazila level where the common interest groups of farmers and local government will be actively involved. Therefore, it can be expected that the projects’ extension activities are pro-poor. However, there remains some concern like elite capture.

It is therefore important that the NATP makes some special arrangements to avoid unpredictable adverse consequences that could happen in the research component. As a tool to assist the project, a simple safeguard management framework has been proposed applicable to the research component followed by a social safeguard management plan to be applied to the extension component.

8.2 Legislative Framework

The constitution of the people’s republic of Bangladesh pledges

A society - free from exploitation -Representative local government - Participation of women in all spheres of national life - Basic necessities of life for all citizens–food, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare - Equality before law and - Freedom of association

All of the above constitutional provisions are important since they pledge not only equality, but also special safeguards for the weaker sections of the society.

Consistent to the constitutional provisions, about one and half dozen policies, acts, rules, strategies and guidelines ha ve been formulated and are under execution to guide sustainable and pro-poor development of the agriculture sector.

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It is however observed that the policies and acts etc. are generally supportive of pro-poor and sustainable development but they are not effectively implemented mainly because of institutional weaknesses and poor governance. It is also observed that increasing awareness is more important and effective to achieve the policy objectives rather than policing. 8.3 NATP Social Safeguard Management Framework – Research Component

NATP agricultural research is a reasonably safe area of investment from the social point of view, because the project will support need based and mainly adaptive research within a broader framework of helping poverty reduction, equity and sustain ability. Still there remains some element of social risks in view of unpredictability of research outcomes and their longer term impacts. The NATP social safeguard management framework would therefore comprise a set of exclusion criteria and a screening process.

Exclusion criteria

Considering adaptability, equity, sustainability and gender focus of the agricultural research interventions under the NATP, the project will adapt and follow a set of exclusion criteria to make sure that research proposals under the CGP having risks of developing socially harmful technologies (adversely affecting the livelihoods of the poor) are right way rejected. An indicative list of exclusion criteria is provided below:

· GMO and nuclear agriculture where results are unpredictable · Physical obstruction and closing water flows affecting aquaculture, waterways, fisheries · Grabbing common property like grazing area, fishing area · Deforestation or otherwise affecting culture and livelihoods of surrounding adibasi groups · Requiring land acquisition leading to involuntary resettlement.

Screening process

While the exclusion criteria will help accepting particular sub project for consideration or outright rejection, the screening process will evaluate merits of the proposals based on a set of subjective criteria. By each criterion a proposal will be assigned positive and negative scores in the assessment of the evaluators. The project will provide an indicative list of criteria for positive or negative scoring which may include:

· Participation · Inclusiveness and equity · Affordability of the poor · Soundness of technology and adaptability · Displacement of tenants, small and marginal farmers · Women’s employment, income and drudgery on women.

8.4 NATP Social Safeguard Management Plan- Extension Component

The outcomes of the extension component are tangible and immediate. Also, the effects and impacts are direct and the affected and benefited people can be easily identified and targeted. Therefore, a more specific safeguard management plan will be applied in the case of the extension component.

Probable Effects and Mitigating Measures

The safeguard management plan will involve identifying probable effects and necessary measures in order to aware and guide the executing agencies to take precautionary measures and take corrective actions, should some interventions need them.

The report contains a tentative list of issues, probable effects on the target groups and suggested mitigating measures to overcome likely negative effects. The identified issues include (a) elite capture, (b) sustainability, (c) prioritization, (d) participation, (e) displacement and marginalization of the weaker groups.

The suggested mitigating measures include (a) social intermediation through NGOs in partnership with local government, (b) building up of responsible and representative community organizations and their capacity building, (c) specially targeting the disadvantaged groups, (d) participatory planning and monitoring at the grassroots with the facilitation of NGOs, extension agencies, CBOs and local xv

government, (e) training at farmer’s field addressing problems identified by the farmer groups and trainee and training time decided by the groups, (f) micro credit, input supply and market linkage and contract farming support where necessary and demanded by the farmer groups.

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1. Introduction

1.1 National Policy Framework

The principal goal of Bangladesh’s economic policy is to reduce poverty so as to lift vast majority of the people above the poverty line and improve the quality of life for the average citizens (GOB 2005.a pp 1). Although considerable progress has been achieved in the fight against poverty’1 Bangladesh has still long way to go if the millennium development goal of reducing poverty to about half of the 1990 level by 2015. This means that, poverty must be reduced to about 29% of total population by 2015 which was about 59% in the early 1990s and close to 49.8% in 2000 (ibid p-7).

According to the PRSP, annual economic growth rate must be 6 to 7 percent2 on a sustained basis coupled with population growth rate of not exceeding 1.5 percent and the bulk of the growth should come from the agriculture sector which is still the largest contributor to the GDP, 23% and the rur al non farm sector which accounts for another 33% of the GDP. These two sectors provide main livelihoods to three fourths of rural people and the rural poor represent 85% of the poor people in Bangladesh.

While growth in the last couple of decades was rather encouraging, it was not accompanied with equity, hence had lower than proportionate impact on the poverty reduction. Gini coefficient for the urban area shot up from 0.33 in 1991/92 to 0.44 in 2000. Rural gini coefficient also increased from 0.27 to 0.36 over the same period (GOB 2004 pp-16). Had income inequality during the period not worsened, rural poverty would have declined further three percentage points and urban poverty by six percentage points.

An examination of the sources of inequality how ever suggests that daily wage labor income followed by agricultural income contribute highest to reduce income inequality (GOB 2004 p-19)3. Hence, a pro-poor growth strategy would mean support to agriculture and wage employment, the bulk of which is in the rural sector and is directly or indirectly related to agricultural growth.

1.2 The NATP and its Objectives and Components

The above observations provide strong arguments to channel more resources to develop the agriculture sector as a pro-poor growth strategy with an aim to attaining the targets of the MDG. The country’s poverty reduction strategy therefore has emphasized the need to support the agriculture sector as a priority area (GOB 2005.a pp-xxi). Within the broader framework of poverty reduction strategy, the National Agricultural Technology Project is proposed to be undertaken by the Government of Bangladesh with the following key objectives:

e. Strengthen the national agricultural technology system, f. Increase productivity, g. Accelerate and diversify production systems, and h. Enhance market opportunities and market linkages, especially of small and marginal producers of high value commodities.

The proposed NATP comprise of the following three main components:

d. Agricultural Research Support: This will comprise establishment of an endowment fund to provide an income stream for supporting competitive grant program (which will be of short gestation period and demand driven field based research where public, private and NGO sectors as well as individuals will have access on competitive basis) and a longer term sponsored public good research (SPGR) in which mainly ARIs, Universities and other institutes are likely to compete. To manage the CGP, the GOB would establish an independent Bangladesh Agricultural Resear ch Foundation, called Krishi Gobeshona Foundation (KGF) and the BARC would have enhanced role in the NARS through legal and other reforms and institutional efficiency enhancement.

1 Bangladesh’s achievements are in track with the requirement of the MDG in several indicators such as reducing child and infant mortality, expanding primary and secondary education, eliminating gender gap in the primary and secondary education and reducing population growth rate from 2.5% (1961-74) to 1.54% (1991-2001). 2 Growth rate in the recent past was around 5% which has increased to over 6.5% by mid -2006. 3 Source of inequality in the rural sector was mainly outside of agriculture such as enterprise income and remittance. 1

e. Agricultural Extension Support: The main focus of the component would be to strengthen the emerging decentralized pluralistic extension system and enhancing institutional efficiency. Decentralization of extension service would be based on lessons learnt from successful approaches pilot tested in Bangladesh in the recent past, such as the Local Extension Agent in Fisheries (LEAF) and the decentralized technology transfer mechanism of the National Agricultural Technology Project of India (NATPI). The key element of decentralized extension system would include support to community based organizations comprising village le vel Common Interest Groups (CIG) and their federation(s), Producer Organization (PO) at the UP, Upazila and district levels, and UP level farmers’ information and advice centre, Institutional efficiency enhancement, improved inter -agency cooperation and linkages with the private sector and NGOs services. This will also include better linkages between research, extension and farmers. Institutional efficiency enhancement will also include setting up of a revolving fund at the Upazila level from which the extension departments – Agricultural Extension, Livestock and Fisheries would take advance for operating expenses and replenish the same when funds for the same purpose are available from the Government.

f. Development of Value Chain: The main focus of the component would be a few selected high value commodities based on comparative advantage, farmer preference and market demand- for both local consumption and export. Indicative list of such commodities include (a) rice – for food security reason and the need for releasing land from this low -remunerating crop for a more diversified cropping system, (b) maize- for demand as poultry feed, (c) horticulture crops (fruits, vegetables and floriculture), (d) livestock- mainly dairy and poultry, and (e) fisheries – mainly pond aquaculture and coastal shrimp aquaculture. The component comprises two sub- components – farmer market linkages through promotion of contract farming and quality improvement; and knowledge management and technical support.

1.3 Geographical Coverage

The research component is nationwide by nature and would support research proposals coming from the ARIs and other relevant institutions located anywhere in Bangladesh. The extension component will be executed in about 120 Upazilas in five of the six administrative divisions. The Upazilas of northwestern Rajshahi division will not be included under the extension component since ADB is assisting implementation of a similar project there. The Chittagong Hill districts will also not be included as separate institutional arrangement is required to take up GOB projects in the Hill Tract areas. The value chain component will cover selected Upazilas in any region. Under the second and third components, the Upazilas would be selected using a set of criteria including (a) poverty levels, (b) agro-ecological potential, (c) status of rural infrastructure, (d) status of natural resource base, and (e) institutional capacity.

It is important to note that, while selection based on the first criterion favors poverty stricken and less developed areas, other criteria are likely to favor relatively developed areas. Trade-off between criteria deserves careful consideration and involves subjective judgments and therefore a list of selected Upazilas for each component will be provided in the Project Document.

1.4 The Project Preparation Team and the Task under Social Assessment

As part of the formulation of the proposed National Agricultural Technology Project (NATP), a group of 23 national consultants were engaged to prepare a detailed report called “Project Description and Implementation Plan”. The group of consultants included a Social Scientist to make a Social Assessment of the proposed project interventions. This report is an outcome of the social assessment part of the PPT.

1.5 Approach and Methodology

The task began with a review of relevant documents, discussion with the relevant research organizations and government departments. These were supplemented with a Participatory Rural Appraisals in a total of six villages during March-April and two regional and a national workshops held in Mymensingh, Iswardi and Dhaka in May 2006.

2. Beneficiary Assessment

2.1 Socio -Economic Profile of Bangladesh

Bangladesh, the world’s most densely populated agricultural and rural society has total population of 140 million and total land area of only about 148,000 kemp indicating average density close to 1000 people per kemp. The country is least endowed with mineral resources and fossil fuel except for natural gas and recent discovery of coal. However, her main resources are land, water and people.

Bangladesh is blessed with vast fertile deltaic plain land, one of the world’s largest fresh water sources from the rivers along with availability of high quality ground water at shallow depth almost throughout the country. Also, the country has unlimited supply of semi-saline brackish water flows which mixes up with upstream fresh water in vast coastal plains, highly suitable to coastal aquaculture. And, of the 140 million people, average 22 years of age, majority (54.4%) are in the age group 15 to 59 with concentration in the lower age groups (41% in 15-39 years age group) who will remain economically active from now on to the coming decades , are its main resource.

2.1.1 Demographic Profile

Bangladesh’s present population is around 140 million and enumerated population as per Population Census 2001 was close to 124 million which grew at 1.54% annually during Jan 1991 to Jan 2001 compared to 2.83% during 1974-81. Table-1 shows regional pattern of population density, household size, male female ratio, literacy and urbanization.

Population density is lowest in Chittagong Hill Tracts, followed by Khulna district, because of Hills and Sundarbans forests. Dhaka district has highest density because of metropolis. Average size of household is 4.9 (as per population census 2001) compared to 5.5 in 1991. Literacy rate was highest, 57% in Dhaka district and lowest in Mymensingh and Rangpur (Kurigram and Gaibandha) have lowest literacy. Division wise, Khulna and Barisal have high literacy while Sylhet and Rajshahi have low literacy.

Table -1: Regional distribution of population Region) (greater Area Population Density/ Average Size Sex Ratio Literacy 7yrs+ Urban districts/Division 000 km2 (million) km2 of Household (M per Both Sex Pop % 100 F) Chittagong Hill T 12.89 1. 34 104 4.5 113 38.87 32 Chittagong 8.24 8.30 1,007 5.5 103 49.41 42 Comilla 6.72 9.21 1,370 5.5 98 44.13 12 Noakhal 6.17 5.26 852 5.5 96 48.86 13 Chittagong Division 34.03 24.12 709 5.4 101 46.88 24 Rajshahi Division 34.81 30.09 864 4.5 103 40.90 15 Dhaka 7.44 17.31 2,326 4.7 115 56.52 61 Mymensingh 16.77 15.62 932 4.8 103 34.58 13 Faridpur 6.99 6.06 867 4.9 102 41.96 11 Dhaka Division 31.19 38.99 1,250 4.7 107 46.22 34 Kushtia 3.50 3.33 952 5.0 102 39.64 15 Jessore 6.57 5.22 845 4.6 105 47.75 14 Khulna 12.40 5.72 461 4.7 108 53.39 28 Khulna Division 22.47 14.61 650 4.6 104 48.14 20 Barisal Division 13.30 8.15 613 4.9 101 53.17 14 Sylhet Division 12.60 7.90 627 5.7 102 39.57 12 BANGLADESH 148.40 123.85 835 4.9 106 45.32 23.1 Source: BBS, Population Census, 2001. Rajshahi, Barisal and Sylhet division data are not broken down to districts.

2.1.2 Spatial Variation of Poverty

One half of Bangladesh people were poor in 2000 4 with substantial rural urban difference, 53% in rural area compared to 37% in urban area. Dhaka city and surroundings had lowest poverty (27 to 29%) against 62 to 65% in rural areas in the districts of Rajshahi division. Table -2 shows a comparison of poverty in various parts of the country during 1991-92 and 2000. Tablep-3 shows incidence of poverty in the rural and urban areas by administrative division.

Table-2: Incidence of Headcount Poverty, 1991-92 and 2000 (Percentage of people) Region (Greater Districts) 1991-92 2000 Rural Rajshahi & Pabna (NW) 77 65 Rural Bora, Rangpur, Dinajpur (NW) 71 62 Rural Faridpur, Tangail, Jamalpur (CENTRAL) 73 57 Rural Khulna, Jessore, Kushtia (SW) 59 52 Rural Sylhet, Comilla (NE) 47 49 Rural Noakhali, Chittagong (SE) 45 47 Rural Dhaka 60 47 Bangladesh Rural 61 53 Bangladesh Overall 59 50 Bangladesh Urban 45 37 Dhaka City 36 29 Other Urban Areas of Greater Dhaka District 53 27 Data Source: World Bank 2005: Attaining the Millennium Development Goals in Bangladesh, Dhaka. P-6

Table-3: Poverty by Administrative Divisions 2000 (Percentage of People) Division/Region All Area Rural Area Urban Area Rajshahi (Northwest) 61.0 62.8 48.1 Khulna (Southwest) 51.4 52.2 47.1 Barisal (South) 39.8 40.0 37.9 Dhaka (Central North) 44.8 52.9 28.2 Chittagong & Sylhet (East) 47.7 48.4 44.0 Country Average 49.8 53.1 36.6 Source: BBS, Statistical Yearbook, 2004 page 719

2.1.2 Inequality and vulnerable middle

During 1991-92 to 2000 yearly growth of per capita consumption expenditure was close to 2% against mean per capita GDP growth of 1.5%. Importantly, the growth curve of per capita consumption expenditure was ‘J’ shaped (World Bank 2005.b pp 7), the bottom 20% having 1.25 to 2.0 percent growth while the middle 40% had very little gains (third to sixth deciles) but the top 20% had very high growth, above 2% to up to 3.5 percent. It implies that, despite increasing inequality, the poorest ones also improved to some extent, but those in the middle improved only marginally and appeared vulnerable.

2.2 Profile of the Agriculture Sector

2.2.1 Land ownership and Tenancy pattern

The country’s poverty reduction strategy paper (GOB 2005.a pp-15) noted that

“Land used to be the source of both wealth and income and of power and status in rural Bangladesh. This centrality has undergone drastic changes. Land is no longer the principal basis of power and status; neither does it serve to limit the livelihood opportunities of the poor. The subsistence orientation of production too has given way to a more complex and fluid livelihood strategy. Land has assumed a new multi-functionality within this multiple livelihood strategy far removed from its connotation of power and dominance.”

4 Latest BBS data shows poverty reduced to 42.1% of total and 43.3% of rural population (Economic Survey 200 5 pp 165). 4

However, land remains the main livelihood asset in the rural Bangladesh and it is still an important (not a determinant) indicator of poverty, though not the single source of livelihood for most rural households. It is evident that incidence of poverty decreases with the increase of landholding. While 57% of the households owning less than 0.5 acre cultivable land are poor, it drops to 13% for households owning 5 acres or above. A little less than one half (46%) of the households are poor in the landholding group 0.5 to 1.49 indicating that 1.5 acres land is the lower limit to lift probability of being non-poor above 50 percent given existing level of productivity and land use pattern. It is also important to note that, 43% of those owning no land or less than 0.5 acre land are non-poor, indicating that a substantial proportion of the functionally landless households are also non-poor.

According to Sample Agriculture Survey 2005, 59.14% of 24.56 million rural households had farm holdings, a decrease from 66.18% of 17.8 million rural holdings as per 1996 Agriculture Census. Average agricultural land per farm household in 2005 declined to 1.26 acres from 1.50 acres in 1996. In 1996 average own land of all rural holdings was 1.14 acres which has declined to 0.90 acres in 2005.

Table- 4 below shows land ownership pattern of the country. Of the 17.8 millio n rural households as per the Agricultural Census of 1996, about 52.7% were functionally landless (owning no land or owning below 0.5 acre), close to 23.5% were marginal farmers who owned between 0.5 to 1.49 acres, about 22% were small and marginal farmers and only about 1.7% were large farmers. The functionally landless group owned about 13% of total land but less than 4% of cultivable land. The richest group, less than 2%, on the other hand owned about 18% area. However, this does not mean that land redistribution is a viable option to reduce poverty. Even if all large holdings are forced to give away land exceeding 7.5 acres, only about 864,000 acres land would be available and its redistribution could move only about 576,000 households above poverty line (3% of rural households) as per 1996 census and this would be much lower now because of further splitting of the holdings over the last ten years.

Of the total cultivable land, about 48% was irrigated. Percentage of land under irrigation varied marginally across holding size, the large holdings had lower proportion of land under irrigation than the small and marginal farmers. Higher manpower per unit area of land and higher urge to survive on small holdings motivated - rather compelled the small and marginal farmers to cultivate more intensively and with higher irrigation cover.

Table-4: Pattern of Land Ownership (Area in Acres)

Number of % of Total % Total Cultivable % Cult Irrig Type of Holding Holdings holdings Area Area Area Area Area % irrig No Land owned/operated 38,245 0.21 2 0.01 - - - 0 No Cultivable Land Own 5,070,712 28.44 1,087 5.35 - - - - Cult land 0.01-0.04 acre 920,988 5.17 216 1.06 22 0.12 1 4.55 Cult land 0.05-0.49 acre 3,356,400 18.83 1,317 6.48 655 3.69 310 47.33 Functionally Landless 9,386,345 52.65 2,622 12.90 677 3.81 311 45.94 Marginal 0.50-0.99 2,437,231 13.67 1,681 8.27 1,431 8.05 799 55.84 Marginal 1.00-1.49 1,757,073 9.86 1,996 9.82 1,803 10.15 984 54.58 Marginal Farm 4,194,304 23.53 3,677 18.08 3,234 18.20 1,783 55.13 Small Farm 1.50-2.49 1,872,089 10.50 3,209 15.78 3,198 18.00 1,616 50.53 Medium Farm 2.50-7.49 2,077,784 11.65 7,498 36.88 7,537 42.41 3,507 46.53 Large 7.50 & above 297,665 1.67 3,327 16.36 3,125 17.58 1,370 43.84 All holdings 17,828,187 100.00 20,333 100.00 17,771 100.00 8,587 48.32 Source: Agriculture Census 1996

Type of the Tenancy as in the Agricultural Census 1996 is shown below in Table-5. It shows that Bangladeshi farmers are basically owner operators, 66% of all holdings followed by owner cum tenants, about 24% holdings. Only about 10% are purely tenant operators most often by sharecropping terms. Of

the total cultivated area of about 20.5 million acres or close to 8.3 million ha, about 80% is under owner operation and 20% under tenant operation.

Table -5: Tenancy Pattern Description Number Percentage of Operated Area Percentage of Area holdings (acres) 1.Owner Operator holdings 11,807,551 66.23 12,093,126 59.04 2. Tenant Operator 1,814,595 10.18 433,649 2.12 3. Owner cum Tenant 4,206,072 23.59 7,957,785 38.84 4. Total Owner-operated area= 16,323,112 79.68 1+ owner operated part of 3 Total Tenant operated area = 2 + 4,161,448 20.32 Tenancy part of 3 All holdings 17,828,218 99.99 20,484,560 100.00 Data Source: BBS, Agricultural Census 1996.

2.2.2 Major Crops: Crop area and Crop Production

Changes noticed in cropping pattern include decline of both area and production of local varieties of rice in all seasons and decline of the area of also HYV Aus. Boro HYV and Aman HYV increased in both area and production. By now, Boro HYV has become the dominant crop but yield increase in each type was nominal. Jute acreage and production decreased while minor cereals, mainly maize, fruits and vegetables showed some increase. Despite some trend of crop diversification, cereals still dominate and account for about 82% of the cropped area. Table-6 shows cropping pattern of the country.

Table-6: Crop Area, Total Production and Yield in Bangladesh Crop Name 1998-99 2000-2001 2003-04 Area Production Yield Area Production Yield Area Production Yield (000 (000 (Tons/ha) (000 (000 (Tons/ha) (000 (000 (Tons/ha) acres) Tons) acres) Tons) acres) Tons) Aus Local 2,429 889 0.904 2,123 981 1.141 1,854 896 1.194 Aus HYV 1,091 728 1.648 1,152 935 2.005 1,117 936 2.070 Aus Total 3,520 1,617 1.135 3,275 1,916 1.445 2,971 1,832 1.523 Aman B. Local 1,485 538 0.895 1,902 963 1.251 1,542 786 1.259 T. Local 5,935 2,980 1.240 5,297 3,348 1.561 5,110 3,205 1.549 HYV 5,342 4,218 1.950 6,911 6,938 2.480 7,378 7,529 2.521 Aman Total 12,762 7,736 1.497 14,110 11,249 1.969 14,030 11,520 2.028 Boro Local 737 544 1.823 499 367 1.817 514 405 1.946 HYV 7,978 10,008 3.098 8,797 11,554 3.244 9,230 12,432 3.327 Boro Total 8,715 10,552 2.991 9,296 11,921 3.167 9,744 12,837 3.254 Total Rice 24,997 19,905 1.967 26,681 25,086 2.322 26,745 26,189 2.419 Wheat 2,180 1,908 2.162 1,909 1,673 2.165 1,586 1,253 1.951 Minor Cereal 219 65 0.733 139 50 0.888 222 270 3.004 Total Cereal 27,396 21,878 1.973 28,729 26,809 2.305 28,553 7,712 2.397 Pulses 1,352 416 0.760 1,170 366 0.773 1,039 333 0.792 Oilseed 994 448 1.113 1,036 385 0.918 960 406 1.045 Spices 620 396 1.578 624 397 1.571 685 607 2.189 Jute 1,181 4,475 1.703 1,107 4,526 1.828 1,008 4,376 1.941 Tobacco 79 28 0.875 74 36 1.202 76 39 1.268 Betel nut 89 28 0.777 190 45 0.585 191 55 0.711 Betel Leaves 34 74 5.376 38 82 5.330 41 93 5.603 Fruits 458 1,430 7.712 473 1,486 7.760 536 1,772 8.166 Winter Vegetables 364 1,059 7.186 379 1,065 6.941 395 1,131 7.072 Summer Vegetables 208 424 5.035 247 513 5.130 283 608 5.307 Potato 605 2,762 11.276 616 3,216 12.895 669 3,908 14.429 Sweet Potato 102 383 9.275 97 357 9.091 88 320 8.982 Sugarcane 430 6,951 3.194 417 6,742 3.195 404 6,484 3.171 All Crops 33,482 33,801 2.494 34,780 39,283 2.790 34,928 47,844 3.383 Area in 000 ha 13,555 14,081 14,141 Note: yield for sugarcane is converted to sugar equivalent, Source: BBS, Statistical Yearbooks 2001 and 2004

The agriculture sector accounts for about 23% of the national GDP as of 2004, a decline from 26% in 1995. Crop sub sector is the largest contributor, accounting for 13% of the GDP in 2005, a decline from 15.4% in 1995.

Crop sector extension service has strong network of Sub Assistant Agriculture Officer (formerly called Block Supervisor) at the block level, usually 2 to 3 per Union Parishad. But service delivery to the farmer level remained weak mainly because of unstable operational funding, inadequate supervision, wide spread staff unionism, lack of transparency and accountability and low interaction with local government and NGOs and complaints of staff absence in nearly universal.

2.2.3 Livestock

According to Agricultural Census 1996, about 76% of the enumerated 17.8 million rural peasant holdings (grihasth) had poultry, 39% had duck 46% had cattle and 31% had goats. Over all picture of livestock holding is shown in Table -2.

Table-7: Livestock holdings in Bangladesh, 1996 Particulars Percentage of Rural Average animal Peasant Holdings per holding Holdings with cattle 45.8 3.0 Holdings with buffaloes 1.5 2.7 Holdings with goat 31.4 2.3 Holdings with sheep 2.8 3.4 Holdings with poultry 76.3 7.1 Holdings with duck 39.3 4.2 Note: Holdings essentially refer to rural households enumerated under Agricultural Census 1996.

The above Table shows an average picture. But, across economic categories, poorer households tend to rear poultry more frequently than larger animals like cattle and buffaloes.

Until very recently, 100% eggs and poultry was produced in the backyard farms. This scenario is changed now -a-days most of the rural Upazila and small towns each has a few hundred poultry farms. Many of the smaller poultry farms are operated by other wise unemployed young men and women, many receiving short training through Government departments like Livestock Services, Youths, and Women Affairs, based at the Upazila and district levels. Presently, the share of farmed egg and poultry production is rapidly increasing and that of backyard poultry is declining. Still, backyard poultry and duck rearing remained important and will continue to meet substantial part of egg and meat production. Backyard poultry sector is particularly important for providing cash income opportunity to the poor rural women.

Use of animal power, mainly cattle and buffaloes for tillage, rural transport, mustard seed and sugarcane crushing etc. has declined tremendously over the last couple of decades. Intermediate technology like power tiller, mechanized three-wheeler vans, pedal thresher, power crusher and motorized mustard crusher (ghani) has largely replaced animal-driven traditional practices. Cattle rear ing are now basically meant for producing meat and milk. Demand for these is in-exhaustive and value-addition through linkage industry has good prospect and particularly in the case of milk, it has long tradition. Besides

traditional marketing arrangement, modern marketing system is already introduced and proven although serving a tiny little fraction of the millions of small producers.

Duck rearing has potential in the haor, beel and coastal areas where substantial part of the land remains under water for about six months. Goat has one advantage that very poor households can manage it but its productivity is rather low and often conflicts with another important sub-sector, horticulture. Closed culture of goat is yet to be proven for extension to the smallholders. Extension service remains weak for both backyard producer and smallholder commercial farmers. Larger commercial farms employ trained veterinary workers but small and backyard farmers have to depend on the public sector veterinary extension servic e. Although the DLS has infrastructure basically down to Upazila, quality of service and proportion of farmers reached are far below expectation and local needs. Increased manpower in the public sector is unlikely and therefore, alternative extension method- specialized service at the Upazila level and one-stop multi-purpose information centre at UP level with strong inter -agency cooperation and linkage with beneficiary organizations (CIG, PO and Local Government) must be introduced.

2.2.4 Fisheries

The fisheries sub sector experienced massive structural change over the past three decades and this trend although slowed down is likely to continue. The sub sector grew annually between 6.8 to 10.0 percent during 1995 to 2000 which has slowed down to about three to four percent in the recent years (2003-04 and 2004-05), still above average agricultural growth of about 2%. The sub sector has further potential to grow as its produces have high income elasticity hence high growth of local market is foreseen. Also it has good export market provided quality assurance to international standards.

Within fisheries sub sector, aquaculture is growing faster while the shares of both inland capture fisher ies and marine fisheries sharply declined. The scope of the NATP is however, to a great extent relevant to the aquaculture part of the sub sector, both pond aquaculture and coastal aquaculture, mainly shrimp and prawn. Conservation of inland fisheries resources through community based micro-interventions in resource management is another area of interest to target beneficiaries and deserves high priority.

Table-8 below shows relative share of inland capture, aquaculture and marine fisheries in Bangladesh as of 1987-88 and 2002-03. During the period share of inland capture fisheries declined from over 51% to 35.5% while the share of aquaculture more than doubled from 21% to about 43%. Share of marine fisheries also declined about 28% to 22%.

Table-8: Area and Production of Fish by Type of Fisheries Type of Fisheries 1987-88 2002-03 Area (000 Total Yield % of Area Total Yield % of prod ha) Catch/ (kg/ha) prod (000 ha) Catch/ Prod (kg/ha) Prod (000 (000 Tons) Tons) Inland Capture (Rivers, 4,047 424 105 51.27 4,047 709 175 35.49 Floodplains etc) Pond 147 149 1,014 18.02 291 752 2,584 37.64 Baor 5.5 1.3 236 0.16 5.5 4.1 745 0.21 Shrimp farm 94 25 266 3.02 141 101 716 5.06 Aquaculture Total 362 175.3 484 21.20 437 857 1,961 42.89 Total Inland 4,409 599 136 72.47 4,484 1,566 349 78.38 Marine 228 27.57 432 21.62 Country Total 827 100.00 1,998 100.00 BBS: Statistical Yearbook 1992 and Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2004

Information presented above based on published data however provide only a partial view of the massive structural change. Rapid expansion of aquaculture through conversion of paddy land to fish ponds and large-scale seasonal aquaculture in the semi-closed water bodies and low-lying agricultural areas are already visible but not properly reflected in the published national statistics. This has also not reflected recent development and actual growth in coastal aquaculture. The National Sub Strategy on the Shrimp shows total farm area at 210,000 ha and DOF has indicated total shrimp farm area at 203,000 ha in 2003- 04 while BBS published data still shows 141,000 ha shrimp farm area.

Like livestock services, the field level extension of the fisheries sector remained weak. However, the Department of Fisheries (DOF) has already developed and piloted an alternative extension approach incorporating more participatory methods and partnership with the beneficiary groups, NGOs and other service providers. The approach is called Local Extension Agent in Fisheries (LEAF) in which the DOF at the Upazila level provides training and other support to locally selected extension agents to reach necessary services to the fisher and aquaculture groups at the village level.

2.3 Bangladesh’s Achievements in terms of Important Social Indicators

2.3.1 Cross Country Comparison

Table -9 provides Bangladesh’s achievement in terms of several important social indicators compared to three neighboring countries, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as reported in the Human Development Report of the UNDP, 2005 and in the Bangladesh Development Series of the World Bank, Paper numbers 1 and 9 of 2005.

Table-9: Cross Country Comparison of Social Indicators

Indicators Bangladesh India Pakistan Sri Lanka HDI, GDI Rank in HDI (among 177 nations) 139 127 135 93 HDI Value (between 0 to 1.0) 0.520 0.602 0.527 0.751 Rank in Gender Development Index 105 98 107 66 GDI Value (between 0 to 1.0) 0.514 0.586 0.508 0.741 Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) 0.218 0.379 0.370 Demography Population (million) 2003 131 1,071 152 20 Population Growth 1.7 1.4 2.0 0.7 Urban Population % 24.3 28.3 34.1 21.1 Total Fertility Rate 3.2 3.1 4.3 2.0 Contraceptive Prevalence Rate 58 48 28 70 Income, growth, equity, inflation GDP Per Capita 2003 (US$) 376 564 555 948 GNI Per capita 2004 (US$) 440 GDP Per Capita 2003 PPP(US$) 1,770 2,892 2,097 3,778

Per capita Income US$ PPP Men 2,289 4,130 3,082 5,009 Per capita Income US$ PPP Women 1,245 1,569 1,050 2,579 Female/Male Income 0.54 0.38 0.34 0.51 GNP Growth 3.1 4.0 1.1 3.3 Distribution: Gini-coefficient Index % 31.8 32.5 33.0 33.2 Inflation: Consumer Price Increase 5.2 3.8 2.9 6.3 Literacy Adult Literacy (Males) 50.3 73.4 61.7 92.2 Adult Literacy (Females) 31.4 47.8 35.2 88.6 Youth Literacy (age group 15-24) 50 76 65 97 Net Primary Enrolment 84 87 59 100 Primary School Completion Rate % 67 84 98 Net Secondary Enrolment 45 Combined School Enrolment Males 52 64 43 67 Combined School Enrolment Females 54 56 31 69 Health Life Expectancy Males (years) 62.1 61.8 62.8 71.5 Life Expectancy Females (years) 63.7 65 63.2 76.8 Physician per 100,000 people 23 51 68 43 Access to safe drinking water 75 86 90 78 Sanitation 2002 48 30 54 91 Underweight Children % 45 47 38 29 Low Birth Weight 30 30 19 22 Infant Mortality 1970 145 127 120 65 Infant Mortality 2002 51 67 83 17 Under 5 mortality per thousand 2000 82 96 110 19 Child Labor % of age 10-14yrs, 2000 28 12 15 2

Source: UNDP, Human Development Report 2005 and WB Bangladesh Development Series 2005

2.3.2 Gender

Overall situation:

Gender can be defined as culturally constructed roles and behavior of sexes. Nature fixes certain physical condition for human males and females which are universal and determine the biological relations essential for the survival and reproduction of the species. Such roles are invariable across culture and time. In contrast, each human society defines a set of culturally appropriate norms and behavior for human males and females, what is called gender.

Bangladeshi, more appropriately the Bangalee society is patriarchal in nature where men and women have markedly differentiated roles and status as in many other societies. Traditionally, women are expected to stay home and devote full attention to household chores while men are expected to work outside and feed the family as breadwinner. This basic philosophy made women subservient to men.

The traditionalist view is rapidly changing and women are now taking larger roles. Women in Bangladesh are no longer confined within homestead boundary or inside veil. Currently, they contribute significantly to their household as well as to the economy. Over the last couple of decades, women’s participation in the extra-household income earning activities has changed a lot and the structure of labor force part icipation has changed.

Table- 10 provides Bangladesh’s achievements in reducing gender gap in terms of several social and economic indicators.

Table - 10: Gender Differentiated Economic and Social Status INDICATORS National Urban Rural Male Female Male Female Male Female Labor force Participation Labor force (million) 1985-86 27.7 3.2 4.1 0.6 23.6 2.6 Labor force (million) 2002-03 36.5 10.3 8.6 2.7 27.9 7.6 Crude Activity Rate 1985-86 53.6 6.4 55.0 9.3 55.4 9.3 Crude Activity Rate 2002-03 52.7 15.9 53.8 17.6 52.3 15.4 Refined Activity Rate 1985-86 81.2 9.8 78.8 14.0 81.9 9.0 Refined Activity Rate 2002-03 (1) 87.4 26.1 85.1 27.4 88.1 25.6

Employment Type 2002-03 Employer 0.4 0.2 0.7 0.3 0.4 0.1 Employee 13.8 13.4 24.4 21.6 10.5 10.5 Self -employed 50.6 24.5 47.1 21.6 51.6 25.5 Day labor 22.9 9.6 17.3 10.1 24.7 9.5 Unpaid family worker 9.9 48.0 7.6 39.3 10.6 51.0 Domestic worker (paid) 0.1 2.5 0.1 4.3 0.1 1.8 Apprentice 1.0 0.6 1.3 1.2 0.9 0.4 Others 1.2 1.2 1.4 1.6 9.1 1.1

Income disparity % of Earners below monthly income 7.0 66.0 Tk. 1000 income (Self -Emp) 2000 % of Earners below monthly income 14.0 61.0 Tk. 1000 income (Salaried) 2000

Health Infant Mortality/000 age <1yr 1996 68 67 52 49 78 74 Infant Mortality 2002-03 54 52 38 37 58 56 Child Mortality/000 age <5yr 1996 11.4 12.0 7.7 7.7 11.8 12.3 Child Mortality 2002-03 4.7 4.4 4.4 3.3 4.8 4.6 Maternal Mortality/000 LV 1991 4.72 4.02 4.81 1996 3.21 2.85 3.36 2002 3.15 2.04 3.4 Life Expectancy at Birth Yrs 1991 56.5 55.7 60.5 59.8 56.2 55.3 2002 64.5 65.4 67.1 67.7 63.9 65.0 Education Literacy Rate (age 7+) 1991 38.9 25.5 46.2 33.3 25.8 16.3 2001 49.6 40.8 64.9 54.8 44.4 36.7 Adult Literacy (age 15+) 1991 44.3 25.8 62.6 44.0 38.7 21.5 2001 53.9 40.8 70.3 57.1 47.9 35.9 Women’s Share in Education Students Fem % Teachers Fem % Primary Schools (1986, 1996, 2002) 42.3 46.6 49.4 13.7 26.8 34.9 Secondary Schools (1998, 2000, 02) 45.2 46.7 50.0 14.3 15.7 19.2 Medical Colleges (1996, 98, 2002) 34.3 38.8 42.2 20.9 23.8 21.5 Engineering University (2000, 01, 02) 13.1 13.3 15.0 11.4 13.6 13.6 General University (2000, 01, 02) 24.2 24.9 25.2 - 16.1 16.1 Source: Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Yearbook 2004

Table 10.1 above provides a very clear picture of the relative status of men and women in Bangladesh along with recent trends. In terms of most indicators, substantial improvement in gender equity is observed.

Presently, 26.1% women (against 87.7% men) are economically active (2003), meaning that they work beyond household chores. The change is substantial, from the level of 9.8% in 1986. However, there is substantial difference between men’s and women’s employment structure. Of the 26% economically active women, 48% are unpaid family worker which is a little 9.8% for men. More than one half of the economically active males are self-employed against one fourth of the working women. Day labors are few (10%) among working women compared to men (23%). This employment structure led to lower earning opportunities for women compared to men. While 66% of the self employed and 61% of the salaried women earned below Tk. 1000 per month 93% of the self employed and 86% of the salaried men earned above this level. Typically, wom en are engaged in low -remunerating jobs requiring low technical skills and educational background. Also the women are less likely to be trained and thus made incapable of taking better paid jobs. Things are changing but it is still long way to remove or at least reduce gender gap in income (currently av working women earn 58% of the income of av working men).

In the health sector, gender gap is not only reduced, it is nearly eliminated. In 1990s, rural women had a shorter life expectancy than men and girl child had about 10% higher probability to die below age 5. This is reversed by the turn of this millennium according to BBS data. Readers could doubt BBS mortality data because of weak registration system. But cross-check with Population Census 1981 and 2001 confirms reducing gap between boy’s and girl’s mortality before age 5.

Literacy rate of women increased faster than that of men over the last ten years. But women are still lagging behind. Scholl enrolment of girls has improved tremendously and gender parity has been achieved in both primary and secondary enrolment. In the tertiary level also, women enrolment is increasing. Presently, a little over 25% of the University students are women. The encouraging information is that, as high as 42% of the Medical students are women (2004), an increase from 34% only 6 years earlier.

Besides increasing enrolment of girls at all levels, proportion of female teacher is continuously increasing. By now, it is 35% in the primary level, 19% in the secondary le vel and 16% in the University level. It is very encouraging that, 21% of the medical teachers are women.

Female Headed Households :

Available literature gives varying information pertaining to proportion of female headed households. Ashraf (1996) claimed that 20 to 30 percent of the urban slum dwellers are female headed households while it was said to be below 10% according to BBS (1996). Unfortunately the BBS statistical yearbooks and census reports do not provide gender segregated household data. So, the figures given in the reports like Ashraf can not be verified with authentic sources.

Maniruzzaman (1999) found 7.5% and 10.2% female headed households in two Dhaka slums in areas with 558 and 540 households. Female headed households are much lower in proportion in the rural areas. Quick surveys during this social assessment in six villages found only about 3 to 5 percent households female headed. Maniruzzaman (2000) in another study in rural Mymensingh found only 3 female headed households in a communit y of 93 households.

Although proportion of female headed household is quite low, it is quite high among the poor. The poorest 5 to 10 percent households are predominantly female headed. It is also observed that rural household income is to a great extent a function of household demography. Households without adult male earner tend to be the poorest. Such poor households are excluded even from the mainstream MFI services apprehending their inability to save regularly and pay weekly loan installments.

It was observed in a fishing community in southeastern Habiganj district, during the social assessment in one of the six villages that, the poorest female headed household was excluded from the fisher cooperatives (although her husband was a fisher), hence deprived of the benefits of public fisheries, on the plea that “women can not be fisher”. In this community women are barred to fish in the open area.

Women in agriculture:

In the agriculture sector, women’s role in rice and other crop production, particularly in post-harvest and seed preservation remains sizeable and their involvement in fisheries and livestock is expanding. In the past women’s involvement in these sub sectors was limited to very subsistence level and home-based activities like backyard poultry. Now it has expanded to commercial poultry and aquaculture, within and beyond homestead boundary.

Both GOB projects and NGOs helped women trained in large numbers. It helped them managing own farms and many have developed skills to help other farmers and deliver extension services like poultry vaccinator and fisheries extension agents. Women are also receiving training at the Agriculture Training Institutes (ATI) and are working as DAE extension staff. Departments of Youths, Women, Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and BRDB are training thousands of women every year. Besides, NGOs and BRDB and several MFIs are giving small loans to women groups and individuals for both micro enterprises and household management. A good number of women have demonstrated considerable managerial and entrepreneurial skills. Many are managing small NGOs and business, including agribusiness, very efficiently.

Within agriculture, women are pivotal in respect of kitchen gardening and other homestead production, and thus contributing a lot to household food security. Their roles and functioning provide an opportunity to seek greater off-farm production options.

Given these, the project recognizes that the women participation is crucial to the success of the project. Besides understanding of their roles, needs and perceptions and women-centric constraints that limit their participation in the project designing, implementation and management should be appreciated. Further, it is well perceived that addressing gender issues will result in benefits that go beyond the spheres of the project, into household livelihood improvements in particular and household food and nutritional security, in general.

2.4 The Study of Six Villages

As part of Social Assessment under the NATP preparation, a total of six villages were studied using PRA method and quick surveys in five regions of the country. The villages represented varying geographical and socio-economic characteristics and it was not an intention to generalize the findings. For the country and administrative divisions, available secondary data were used extensively and the study villages provided evidences of similarity, variability and recent changes. The study villages are:

1. Fedainagar, Patuakhali Sadar Upazila – southern coastal, poor road network and high poverty 2. Rangtia, Adibasi village in Jhinaigati Upazila, Sherpur, Greater Mymensingh–North of Dhaka 3. Nilokhya Noya Para – char area of Bokshiganj Upazila, Jamalpur, Greater Mymensingh 4. Borabo, Palash Upazila, Narsingdi – Central region, near Dhaka, poverty very low. 5. Bhobanipour of Baroigram Upazila. Natore – Northwest, crop diversification began 6. Sujapur of Nabiganj Upazila, Habiganj – Fishermen’s village in the northeast, high poverty

First three villages are described blow and later in this section, salient features of the last three and the first two are presented in a matrix.

Village -1: Fedainagar, Patuakhali, 15 year ago and now:

The author had an opportunity to unofficially survey a village in Patu akhali, a southern coastal district of the country, during his association with DANIDA, Dhaka as a development worker from 1989 to 1993. During that time, Patuakhali was a least developed district mainly because of its isolation from the centre, requiring one and half days launch journey to reach the district town and from there to reach the villages in another half day journey by small motor launch, country boat and even long walks up to about 10 kms.

The author was interested to study the social development issues of the region since his employer, DANIDA was formulating an Area Development Program covering Patuakhali and Barguna districts, called Patukhali Barguna Area Development Program. Although in-depth study of particular village was not mandatory, ti was felt relevant to enrich his knowledge of the region and of its problems and priorities in order to effectively contribute to the formulation of a comprehensive area development program leading to taking up of a series of development projects that started materializing in the mid 1990s.

Fedainagar is the ancestral village of the cook of Danida Guest House. This village was selected because of the severity of its problems, typical of the region. The author chose this village because he was able to access it unofficially so that the participants had no reasons to hide or exaggerate facts. He was simply a guest, to the house of a staff and he was able to speak with them very cordially, simply as a visitor and not an executive of an international development organization. So, he had nothing to commit, leading the participant to lengthen the list of poor people or hide income sources or assets apprehending new taxes. He did not use any structured questionnaire, did not make any household list and therefore there was no reason for the participants to treat him some thing like an officer of a donor agency who could help them or a tax officer of the Government. It was very clear to them that he was not a person to benefit them immediately by giving relief or NGO loan or harm them by imposing tax. To them, he was simply a visitor, a guest, coming from the city to spend some time with the village people and learn about village life. So, he was a sort of a development tourist.

Further, the author was accompanied by wife and kids. The kids played with the children in the village and the spouse talked to women very informally. The family shared with the villagers betel leaves, tea and biscuits carried from Patuakhali town and the author offered them bidi (indigenous cigarette although he was not a smoker). His discussion was very unstructured and qualitative. He had no intention to quantify and that gave very reliable information. Some of the points of discussion were:

· The size of the village, how big is it in terms of population and area- approximately 200 households in 1990, 2 kms long and 1 km wide along the right bank of Lohalia river in the Sadar Upazila of Patuakhali, Joinkathi Union Parishad. · About general literacy level of men and women and school attendance of children · About landholding, what percent are landless, small marginal farmers etc. · About cropping pattern – what are the major crops · About physical setting, physical infrastructure · About flooding and other natural calamities · About trade and transport network, marketing of agricultural produce · About occupation of men and women · About urban linkage · About social problems like dowry and child marriage · About the society’s view on the women’s extra-household work involvement and the problems of women · About access to NGO financial services and informal money lending · About social transformation as an outcome of NGO financial services.

The checklist could appear too small but the smallness was needed to ensure quality and reliability. Author’s revisit to the same village one and half decades later as a consultant to the National Agricultural Technology Project provided him an opportunity to compare earlier observations and record changes along with interpretations of likely causes. Table 11 below provides a brief comparison of the village, 15 years ago and now.

Table – 11: Village Fedainagar, Patuakhali, 15 years ago and now

Parameters Early 1990s 2006 Household and 200 households av household size 6.5 300 households av household size 6.0 Poulation Physical features Embankment along the river Lohalia was BWDB completed construction of embankment and incomplete and the whole village was subject to this has contributed to protection of crops. Cropping tidal effects, during the monsoon both agricultural intensity increased which is above 2.0. BWDB also land and homestead area was flooded twice a day provided irrigation and drainage inlets and therefore during high tides. Flood was main constraint to gravity irrigation helped farmers producing T. Aus both agriculture and mobility within the village. and T. Aman rice at low cost. Paved road connect All village roads and most homesteads went under the village from two ends to Patuakhali town and water. people can reach the town in about 30 minutes. Roads within village are yet to be improved. Crops Manly Local Transplanted Aus and Local T. Local T. Aman and T. Aus are still major crops. Aman. HYV Boro was not introduced because of HYV paddy is yet to be popularised but has good the lack of irrigation facilities although rivers and prospect. Rabi crop is on the increase but still canals surround the village. Rabi crop was low, insignificant. most land remained under water until mid winter. Landholding Majority households landless, about one fourth About 50% households are landless about 30% own small and marginal farmers and about one tenth less than half acre, 12% own between 0.5 to 1.5 medium farmers. Large landholding was very acres (marginal), 6% are small to medium farmers, limited, only about 2% and that too about the size and only 2% own above 7.5 acres. Holing size of 8 to 10 acres. reduced by splitting of families. Land Tenure Mainly owner operator and share croppers. 50% own no cultivable land. 70% of the 30% Mortgaging land was rampant and small farmers owning below 1.5 acres sharecrop or mortgage out were becoming landless by this process. and others sharecrop or mortgage in addition to own small holdings. Crop Productivity Very low because of not using HYV, depended Crop productivity improved to from less than one heavily on tidal and weather conditions. Crop ton/ha to 1.5 tons/ha rice per season. Flood and failure or low yield due to flood, drought, cyclone, cyclone effect reduced substantially after pest attack, insect attack etc. was rampant. construction of embankment. Wages and Wage level was very low because of low Real wages increased by 20% but more importantly income productivity, low price of produce and massive availability of work nearly doubled. Labour mobility unemployment of local labour. increased and therefore those willing to work as wage labour find work. Out migration Seasonal out migration to the cities was very high. About 25% households have some of the family About 40% households migrated either full family members working in Dhaka or other cities and or part of it, to the city slums or towns like regularly remitting money. None is overseas worker. Patuakhali . During September to November, All members of about 7% households have rickshaw fare in Patuakhali declined to nearly half, permanently migrated to Dhaka. The trend of both only Tk. 2 per trip of about a couple of kms. seasonal and prolonged migration decreased to some extent. Literacy Female literacy was close to zero percent and male Female literacy improved from nearly zero to about literacy was about 15 to 20 percent. School 30% and the literates ones are in the younger enrolment was very low, about one third of boys generation and male literacy increased to about 40%. and one fifth of girls in the primary level. Only Primary enrolment is about 75%, and secondary about 6 boys and 2 girls were attending secondary enrolment is about 30%, girls ahead of boys in both. school. None was college graduate and grade six Very few attend colleges about 5% and majority of was highest literacy of women in the village. them are however boys. Child marriage, Child marriage of both boys and girls was very Child marriages are still existing but not as frequent dowry and common. Girls were married at age six or seven as it was in the past but dowry is on the increase. employment of and boys at age 12 to 15. I saw girls married out at About 20% women work outside of the household women in the ages not requiring over-garment. One was hardly 5 and majority of them are engaged in the extra household years old. I found a boy married at age 12 infrastructure construction and maintenance. Society activities. belonging to a medium landholding family. The dislikes women working outside of the homestead family was weak in terms of social power. The old but allows it because “they have no other means to grand father and middle-aged father were unable survive”. The informants said, “no husband would to protect their landed property from the probable allow wife working out if he can afford just two capture by the families having dozens of mighty meals. The same applies to father or brother. Only

men. So, he needed a relative in the strong Mridha about 1% women work as NGO worker or teacher family. Hence, the grand son had to marry a girl, and 3% as garment worker or housemaid in the about seven years old from the Mridha family. cities. Poverty 80 -90% 50 -60% Housing Status Very poor housing condition. Most families failed Most houses are made of CI sheet, even of the to reconstruct straw roof after monsoon rains. poorest households. Straw roof house almost totally eliminated except for kitchen and cow dung/fuel shed. MFI/NGO Grameen Bank and ASA were active. Loan The vicious cycle of indebtedness is gone- Service recovery performance was very poor particularly moneylender loan to pay up Grameen loan. Savings of GB. Most borrowers failed paying weekly mobilization improved. Many have GPS account installments mainly because of extreme poverty with GB beyond mandatory Tk. 50 monthly. Many and many borrowed from moneylenders to pay have GPS account of Tk. 200 to Tk 500 per month. outstanding installment to access new MFI loan. GB and ASA are dominant players. Technology and Very primitive, only bullock plough. Fishing by Still primitive but pond aquaculture is coming up, practices in country boat, no aquaculture, no transport except engine boat increasing, rickshaws plenty, husking agriculture walk, motor launch and country boat, not even machine, pedal thresher, power tiller just introduced rickshaw. although very few in number. Extension service Inaccessible area, so totally overlooked Poultry vaccinators come irregularly but service is poor. Rarely consult crop extension worker and veterinary service called only in critical condition of cattle. Source: Author’s own old field notes and memory checked with key informants and present fieldwork in 2006.

Village -2: Adibasi village – Rangtia in Jhinaigati Upazila, Sherpur

Location: As part of the social assessment work under the NATP preparation, the author visited an Adibasi village, Rangtia in Jhinaigati Upazila of Sherpur district in grater Mymensingh. It is only a few minutes drive from the Upazila town and accessed easily by rickshaw. Road within the village is jeepable but people walk short distance as the lorries carrying bolder and sand make it very rough.

Population: Total population of the village is about 600 in 95 households, all belonging to an Adibasi tribe called Kooch and Sonaton Hindu by faith. A traditional village leader, moral, very confidently said that they are 95 households as enumerated during the festival durga puja, last year and they have 275 voters. Number of household and population was about 400.

Literacy: Literacy rate for both male and female is 50% primary school enrolment is 90% for boys and 95% for girls. Secondary school enrolment is 35% for boys and 20% for girls. Seven boys and three girls are college-going and only one man is enrolled at the University level.

Employment: Unemployment rate is clos e to zero percent. Men work in agriculture, cattle rearing and hunting. Women work in agriculture; poultry, duck and goat rearing in addition to household work. Men are usually not involved in household work. So, women bear the load of both household chores and extra income earning and own agricultural work. While unemployment is quite high in the local Bangalee Hindu and Bangalee Muslim communities, particularly those with secondary to higher education, educated men and women in the Kooch tribe are few in number but all of them have managed to get employment in the NGOs and schools.

One new activity has emerged in the area. This is breaking stone, manually with small hammer. Stone is dug out from the hilly streams, stacked along roads. Both men and women are engaged in breaking stones and carrying sand. Men are still hunting wild hen, pig and rabbit. Deer is not available.

Landholding and tenancy: Landlessness is low among the Kooch compared to near-by Bangalees. About 40% (compared to about 70% among Bangalees) households are functionally landless, one half of them own only homestead land but no cultivable land the other half own below half acre cultivable land in addition to homestead land. Another 20% households own between half acre two one and half ac res cultivable land, 30% own between 1.5 to 2.5 acres. The remaining 10% are medium to large farmers

owning 2.5 to 7.5 (5%) and above 7.5 acres (5%). About 80% households are owner operator farmers (cultivate only own land) and the remaining 20% are owner cum tenants (cultivate both own land and sharecropped land).

Land use and crops: About 40% area is elevated hilly land used as homestead land as well as orchard, kitchen garden, cultivation of vegetables, fruits, root crop (simul alu) ginger and turmeric . Plantation of bamboo, timber trees and fruit trees are becoming popular. The remaining 60% area is plain land and is used for producing mainly Aus paddy and Aman paddy. Only about 5% area is under HYV Boro paddy. Crop yield is as under:

Aus paddy: 1.3 tons/ha Aman paddy: 1.7 tons/ha Boro paddy: 2.6 tons/ha Ginger : 9.0 tons/ha Turmeric: .12.0/tons ha Simul alu: 22.0/ha

Price of rice, ginger, turmeric and simul alu are Tk 20, Tk. 30 Tk. 20 and Tk. 6 respectively.

Non -crop agriculture: Mango, jackfruits, banana, papaya and jolpai are grown in the homestead land and nearby orchard. Litchi is newly introduced. Cattle rearing are common and milk price is attractive, Tk. 20/litre. No poultry farm was seen but most households have backyard poultry and goat. Fox and neul kill and eat goat and poultry. Cattle are relatively safe. There is no fisher household in the village and pond aquaculture is also uncommon because the Kooch are not acquainted with aquaculture and there is not enough low and plain land to dig pond.

Extension Service: Normal extension services of the DAE, DLS and DOF rarely reach this Adibasi community although it is very near the Upazila town. The DAE project, SAIP, however, covers this village. Under the SAIP project both men and women groups have been trained on activities like horticulture, paddy crops and poultry. Vaccinator training was provided under SAIP but vaccination of livestock and poultry was rare because of not adequate linkage with the Upazila livestock services and inadequate motivation to make the training effective. The project helped selected trainee households establishing fruits and vegetable garden. The assistance include hand pump tube well, seeds, plant and fertilizer. Beneficiary households highly appreciated the project activities but continuation of the services remains an issue as the project will be closed in June 2007 as the beneficiaries are yet to become self - motivated.

MFI and NGO services: NGO concentration is reasonably high in the Adibasi areas since the NGOs, as part of general policy to work with the indigenous people and other disadvantaged groups, open outlets in such areas. The development partners also assist the local NGOs to execute such programs. Two major NGOs are working in Jhinaigati, the CARITAS and World Vision, through local partners. In addition, the SAIP partner NGO, BEES is also active in the area.

Cultural harmony: The Kooch, other tribes and Bangalee communities live in the area in harmony with each other. It is evident from zero migration since 1972 to other neighboring countries despite being a bordering village. Out migration did happen in the 1940s and early 1960s. During the war of liberation, all migrated to India and 100% came back after independence, December 1971 to early 1972.

Village – 3: Charlander village – Nilokhya Noya Para, Bokshiganj, Jamalpur

Charland areas are specially disadvantaged and have highest concentration of poverty. The social assessment work under the NATP preparation included a short visit to a charland area in Bokshiganj Upazila of Jamalpur district, on the left bank of Brahmaputra Jamuna river system.

Nilokhya Noya Para is a charland, about 3 kms from Nilokhya Bazar and 5 kms from the Upazila connecting regional road. The char is still isolated from the road network. But an earth road is under construction along with bridges and culverts. Two small bridges, now under construction will connect the char to the road network and it will be accessible by rickshaw and motor vehicle. Presently people walk 3 kms to reach the mainland area.

Charlands are of two major categories. One type is isolated char, fully surrounded by rivers. Another type is sandy land along the river bank but not isolated from the mainland, at least during the dry season, October to May. Most mainland char are also isolated from the road network because road construction and maintenance is more expensive in the charland than in the mainland area.

Flood, River Erosion and Extreme Poverty: Flood is a yearly phenomenon and crop failure is inevitable. But river erosion affects charlanders more severely. Some informants said in Kurigram and Chilmar i chars that people must move from one char to the other when river erosion threatens them. They are accustomed to it and therefore build movable house on bamboo or timber poles and with CI sheet roof. The rivers make new char and the charlanders move their house. It happens three to four times in one generation. The charlanders prefer to live and move in groups of households usually belonging to same extended family structure or lineage (bongsho or gushti). The charlanders are very poor, particularly those living in the isolated char. About 60 to 70% households are very poor, 20-25% moderately poor and only about 10% are vulnerable poor. Non-poor and rich households are rare among the charlanders. The extreme poor of the isolated char are often called mora gorib, meaning nearly dead.

The Noya Para char area remains under flood water from mid-June to mid -October. The whole agricultural area is flooded every year. The homestead land is elevated about two meters by earth work but that too is occasionally flooded during August September.

Infrastructure: Nilokhya Noya Para is blessed with new connection to power from the national grid through Rural Electrification Board. But power supply is frequently disrupted as elsewhere in the country. Still, irrigation motors are coming up and cost of irrigation will come down if electricity supply is improved. New earthen road will ease tr ansportation initially by rickshaw van and later by other modes when the road will be paved and connect Bokshiganj and Islampur Upazila towns.

Landholding and Tenancy: Village Noya para has about 200 households, 500 voters and a population of about 800. About two thirds of the households are functionally landless, some 30% own only homestead but no cultivable and 37% own below half acre cultivable land. Most others are marginal (0.5 to 1.5 acre), small (1.5 to 2.5) and medium farmers (2.5 to 7.5). Large farms are rare because of splitting of households. Most farms are owner operated and owner cum tenants are quite common.

Crops: Major crops are Local Aus, Local Aman, HYV Boro, and Jute. Other crops include chilli, brinjal, potato, sweet potato, ground nut, mustard, onion and vegetables. Banana, papaya and vegetables are grown on the homestead land but not much mango. Jackfruit and many other fruit do not survive in the flooded area.

Non -crop agriculture: Cattle, goat, duck and poultry are common as part of home based agriculture. This isolated area is not served by contract growing of milk and vegetables as it can not attract large investors and purchasers. Prospect of backyard poultry, cattle fattening, flood tolerant fruit trees like mango, indigenous species of banana etc. appear promising.

Occupation: Because of relative isolation, most male population is engaged in crop agriculture and daily basis wage employment. Agriculture is still the dominant employing sector. Women are mostly housewife but many work as seasonal agricultural labor during the harvest of chilli, brinjal, ground nut, mustard, potato, sweet potato and onion. Women also work in post harvest work also in major crops like paddy and jute.

Most agricultural labor seasonally migrates to relatively developed districts like Dhaka, Chittagong, Narayanganj, Gazipur, Sylhet and Munshiganj. Those going to the central region, usually come home after two weeks to once month, stay few days with the family. Agricultural wage employment is locally available during December for harvesting Aman crop; January-February for harvesting chilli, onion and mustard and transplanting Boro paddy; April-May for harvesting Boro paddy and sowing jute; July- August for harvesting Jute, Aus and transplanting Aman, September-October for planting onion, chilli, mustard, potato, sweet potato etc.

Seasonality of Employment and Monga: Slack employment season are June-July, October -November and January-February. June-July is a crisis season particularly in the years of high floods and October - November is a critical period, called monga season as food stock finishes even of the medium farmers apart from the absence of work opportunities.

Monga is severe in the isolated char like many in the districts of Kurigram and Gaibanha. The isolated char lack mobility, hence their inhabitants can not search work in the mainland. Nilokhya Noya Para is however less vulnerable to monga as it is not so isolated and there is considerable crop diversification, although the crops are not of high value.

Extension Services: In the absence opportunities to bear recurrent expenses, the GOB extension services are weak even in the mainland area and services are more difficult to reach inaccessible areas like charlands. A group of farmers met in the charland was unaware of the development initiatives, even of the SAIP. May be they are not SAIP group members and they do not know who are members of SAIP beneficiary groups. But it does imply that interaction between trained group members and other non- beneficiary farmer is yet to be established. As elsewhere, the farmers approached fertilizer and pesticide dealers for advice on the input use. The same applies to livestock rearing and the farmers avail services of veterinary quacks. Occasionally they call in DLS veterinary practitioner. Fish pond is rare in this village, hence aquaculture is uncommon.

MFI and NGOs: A visit to two charland settlements in Kurigram and Gaibandha, both isolated char, in 2002 reminds the author of some useful observations. The isolated charlanders are high ly vulnerable. The normal GOB extension programs do not usually reach them. Even the NGOs do not reach them unless under special programs. Two of the leading NGOs, RDRS and BRAC were active in the visited charlands in Kurigram and Gaibandha respectively under special programs.

Factors discouraging MFIs and NGOs working in the isolated char include:

1. High transport cost – only accessible by boat and boat must be chartered for the whole day that costs Tk. 600 while the NGOs can pay only about Tk. 50 per staff per day if not specially provided under some project. Passenger service boats are available in some of the isolated char but services are infrequent, only once a day, staff must stay overnight and return net day. 2. NGOs can not operate on a large scale in the charland because the settlements are scattered, internal mobility is cumbersome and demand for loan (loan size) and capacity to deposit weekly savings are rather low, making the program financially unsound. 3. Risk of default is high during the monsoon and monga period but conventional MFIs require regular weekly installments and deposits in equal amounts. Flexible schedule and unequal installments proven successful but the mainstream MFIs are yet to introduce them. 4. The NGOs feel unsafe to establish outlets in the isolated char, apprehending risk of theft. 5. Mobility is further restricted during the monsoon by winds and strong waves threatening boat capsize and during the dry season people must walk long distance.

Potentials: The char area, both mainland and isolated char has potentials in further diversifying crops. This will spread employment and income opportunities. A number of crops are planted or sown just after flood. Important ones are ground nut, potato, sweet potato, minor cereals like china kaon, chilli, onion, coriander seeds and mustard. A number of crops including mustard and onion are harvested before planting HYV boro rice. These crops can substantially reduce the length of the monga period and its severity. What is needed is making good quality seeds available in time, little bit of training and extension service both in cultivation, post harvest care, marketing and seed preservation (for the feasible ones). Improving village roads, river ghat and raising homestead above normal flood are among the local priorities. Post-monsoon FFW, VGD and VGF require strengthening rather than relief supply when people are already facing monga.

Village 4, 5, 6: Salient Features of mainland villages:

Of the six villages studied, five in the mainland had more structured data and the one in the charland was visited briefly while studying an Adibasi village in the same region and visiting nearby Upazila towns. The salient features of the five mainland villages covered under this brief study are provided in Table 12.

Table – 12: The salient features of five villages

Particulars of Borabo, Bhobanipur, Sujapur, Fedainagar, Rangtia, Features Narsingdi Natore Habiganj Patuakhali Sherpur Geographical Central, Dhaka Northwest, Northeast, South, Barisal North, Region Rajshahi Sylhet Mymensingh Road network Excellent Good Good Fair Good Paved road within Yes, bituminous Concrete road Bituminous Paved road 1 Bituminous road village touched the road touched km from the ¼ km from the village the village village village Distance from 50 km 250 km 200 km 250 km 200 km Dhaka km by Road Road Journey 2 hours 4 hours 4 hours 8 hours 3.5 hours hours from Dhaka Econ Development Developed Developing Less developed Less Developing Status Developed Community Hindu 90%, Muslim 100% Muslim 100% Muslim 100% Adibasi 100% Muslim 10% (Sonaton Hindu) Approximate 120 500 125 300 100 number of households Approximate 534 2500 750 1550 400 Population Households Census 120 110 72 25 Household 30 30 30 0 0 interviewed Average Family 4.4 4.4 5.7 5.1 3.9 Size, national 4.9 Av Earners M 1.6 1.6 1.7 1.4 1.3 Av. Earner F 0.05 0.05 0 0.1 1.3 Main Occupation Agriculture 48% Agriculture 58% Agri 10% Agri 30% Agri 45% Day (Males) Day Lab 0% Day lab 2% Fisher 70% Day Lab 30% Lab 30% Business 14% Business 8% Day Lab 5% Fisher 8% Rickshaw 8% Artisan 10% Transport 12% Business 5% Rickshaw 12% Business 5% OSW 8% Services 16% Rickshaw 5% Business 6% Services12% Services 20% Services 5% Services 14% Main Occupation 80% household 90% household 95% household 80% 100% women (Females) chores only. 20% chores only. chores only. Household double workin teaching, Some in Dhaka as Very few chores only . household plus NGOs, factories, Garment worker, garments Others RMP day lab plus own hospitals. Dislike maid, dislikes rice worker, maid, Lab, occasional agriculture. A few wage laboring in mill work occasional work post teacher/ NGO the village. Some post-harvest harvest, very worker manage poultry wage few garment farm employment . workers Poverty: National Very low (20%) Moderate (40%) Moderately High (50-60%) Low (30%) 49.8% High (50%) Literacy Male Illiterate 10% Illiterate 24% Illiterate 40% Illiterate 50% Illiterate 10% (National 50% I-V 21% I-V 27% I-V 33% I-V 30% I-V 25% VI-X male literate) 2001 VI-X 48% VI -X 20% VI -X 20% VI -X 15% 50% SSC 10% SSC 16% SSC 13% SSC 5% SSC 5% HSC 5% HSC 5% HSC 9% HSC 2% BA 7%

Literacy Female Illiterate 28% Illiterate 50% Illiterate 55% Illiterate 60% Illiterate 10% (National 60% I-V 28% I-V 22% I-V 23% I-V 20% I-V 30% female illiterate) VI-X 36% VI -X 20% VI -X 20% VI -X 15% VI -X 45% 2001 SSC 8% SSC 4% SSC 2% SSC 5% SSC 10% HSC 2% BA HSC 0% HSC 5% 2% Landholding No homestead 3% No cult land 20% No agr land No homestead No homestead 8% No cult land 39% 01-50 dec 23% 72% 5% No agr land No agri land 20% 1-50 dec 26% 51-150 dec 27% Below .5 6% 50% Below .5 With agr land 51-151 dec 23% 151-250 dec 13% 0..5-1.5 = 17% acr 30% 0..5- 80% 151-250 dec 6% 251 + 17% 1.5-2.5= 4% 1.5 = 12% .01- 1.5 acre 60% 251 + 6% Above 2.5 1%. 1.5-2.5= 6% 1.5- 3.0 acre 20% Above 2.5 3%. Landlessness % 65% 50% 78% 80% 20% National 53% Land Tenure: Mainly owner Mainly owner Owner operator Smallholder Owner operator Owner-operator operator, operator, is the norm lease out, 80% Tenant 20% dominant, 20% Sharecropping & Sharecropping & medium ones land under tenancy Mortgage little. Mortgage little. rent in. Major Crops Mainly HYV Sugarcane, Aman HYV Boro, Local Aus and Homestead Boro, pineapple, paddy, wheat, Local Aman. gardening, ginger, mango, jackfruits, mustard, pulses, Pulses , and mango, litchis, papaya spices, sugarcane chilli banana, papaya, jackfruit Non-crop Backyard poultry, Date gur, papaya, Open water River fishery, Backyard poultry, Agriculture milk cow, sheep, mango, jackfruit, fishery, backyard milk cow, goat aquaculture and coconut, cattle, backyard poultry, duck, poultry farm goat, backyard poultry and goat poultry duck Agricultural DLS service DLS service DLS service DLS service SAIP project Extension Services availed with availed with availed with availed with trained farmer incidental incidental incidental incidental and women group expenses. DOF expenses. DAE expenses. DOF expenist. DAE members but not aquaculture was services rarely assists fisher services rarely much under active during available. cooperatives. available. normal GOB FFP. DAE Fertilizer and DAE service Fertilizer and program. services rarely pesticide dealer rarely available. pesticide dealer available. approached for Fertilizer and approached for Fertilizer and advice. Sugar pesticide dealer advice. pesticide dealer mills provide approached for approached for extens ion service advice. advice. to contract sugarcane farmers Development Need activating Demanded CIG to Sustainable Participatory SAIP started priorities GOB extension improve backyard management of land use helping Adibasi services. CIG and poultry by women Beel Fishery. planning. groups but the PO appreciated groups. Need legal and Irrigation project might be but demanded administrative infrastructure closed soon. Need authority to plan support for available but sustainable at village and UP conflict knowledge of program. level. resolution with improved other practices can communities. help a lot. Source: NATP Social Assessment Fieldwork, March April 2006

2.5 Special Note on the Indigenous People

Bangladesh is famous for the ethnic homogeneity of its population. Close to 99 percent of the people are Bangalees, predominantly Bangla-speaking peoples.

Bangladesh's indigenous population consisted of 897,828 persons, just over 1 percent of the total population, at the time of the 1981 census. According to 1991 census number of indigenous people was a little over 1.2 million and 1.13% of total population.

Three Hill districts in southeastern Chittagong region have highest concentration of indigenous people where close to one half of the people belong to tribal communities and the other half are Bangladeshi Bangalees. Other districts with reasonable concentration of indigenous people are loc ated in Rajshahi division in the regions west, Mymensingh in the north, Sylhet in the northeast, and Patuakhali in the south.

Those living in Chittagong Hill Tracts are predominantly Chakma, Marma, Tippra and Moorangs while those living in the Cox’s Bazar and Patuakhali are mostly Rakhain. Tribes living in Mymensingh region are predominantly Garo, Haajong, Rajbongshi and Koonch, those living in Sylhet are mainly Khasia and Manipuri and those living in Rajshahi are mainly Santal.

Majority of the tribal population live in rural settings, where many practiced shifting cultivation. Most tribal people are of SinoTibetan descent and had distinctive Mongoloid features. They differed in their social organization, marriage customs, birth and death rites, food, and other social customs from the people of the rest of the country. They spoke Tibeto-Burman languages. In the mid-1980s, the percentage distribution of tribal population by religion was Hindu 24, Buddhist 44, Christian 13, and others 19.

The four largest tribes are the Chakmas, Marmas (or Maghs), Tipperas (or Tipras), and Moros or Murang. The tribes tended to intermingle and could be distinguished from one another more by differences in their dialect, dress, and customs than by tribal cohesion. Only the Chakmas and Marmas displayed formal tribal organization, although all groups contained distinct clans. By far the largest tribe, the Chakmas were of mixed origin but reflected more Bengali influence than any other tribe. Unlike the other tribes, the Chakmas and Marmas generally lived in the highland valleys. Most Chakmas were Buddhists, but some practiced Hinduism or animism.

Of Burmese ancestry, the Marmas regarded Burma as the center of their cultural life. Members of the Marma tribe disliked the more widely used term Maghs, which had come to mean pirates. Although several religions, including Islam, were represented among the Marmas, nearly all of the Marmas were Buddhists.

The Tipperas were nearly all Hindus and accounted for virtually the entire Hindu population of the Chittagong Hills. They had migrated gradually from the northern Chittagong Hills. The northern Tipperas were influenced by Bengali culture. A small southern section known as the Mrungs showed considerably less Bengali influence.

The Moros, considered the original inhabitants of the Chittagong Hills, lived on hilltops and often fortified their villages. They had no written language of their own, but some could read the Burmese and Bangla scripts. Most of them claimed to be Buddhists, but their religious practices were largely animistic.

The Garos:

Once a nomadic tribe of the Bodo group of Mongoloids now living in different areas of Bangladesh and in the adjacent states of India. Their faces are round, hair and eyes black, foreheads extended to eye area, eyebrows deep, eyes small, noses flat and jaws high. Beards rarely grow on their cheeks and they almost have no hair on their body. Garos are short but usually have stout bodies with wide chests and bulky arms, legs and muscles. Their skin is yellowish and smooth. Garos are said to have an ancestral

relationship with China. There are some similarities between the Chinese and Garos in language as well as folk culture.

According to some anthropologists, Garos descended from the northeast bank of Koknar Lake of the northwestern Chinese province of Chinghai about 3-5 thousand years ago and were first settled in Tura province of Tibet and in Nakalbari area of Bhutan. But being forced to quit these areas, they moved to different places of Cooch Bihar and Assam and Bengal. Garos in Rangpur, had communication facilities that connected it with Assam during British rule. Due to internal conflicts, a group of Garos had to leave the place and started settling in the inaccessible forest areas of the Garo hills, and the tribe permanently got the name Garo. The Garo hills cover an area of 3,000 square miles. In the past, the territory was a part of Bengal but British rulers had included it in Assam.

According to the estimates of the Birisiri Cultural Academy, the number of Garos in Bangladesh was more than 100,000 in the 1990s. Of them, about 40,000 lived in the Mymensingh region. Total tribal population in Mymensingh, Netrokona and Sherpur was about 80,000 in 1991.

Garos do not practice family planning and the reproduction rate among them is higher than the national average. Thanks to the efforts of Christian missionaries, the rate of literacy among the Garos is also higher than the national average. But only a very small number of them acquire higher education. Some educated Garo women work as expert nurses in different hospitals at home and abroad. Some young men and women work in junior positions in Christian NGOs. Some of them teach in educational institutions in the Garo region. The social system, tastes, behavior and dress of Garos are now undergoing changes as a result of their constant interaction with the people of the plains. However, the women of this matriarchal tribe are not in favor of accepting these changes.

Livelihood: Garos historically did not own land. Whatever land they hold in possession, they do so without any ownership documents. They also do not pay rents for land. In the beginning of this century, the density of Garo population in the areas bordering with India was 44 persons per square mile. The pressure on land in the areas around Garo habitats has increased manifold with increase in population, especially because the jhum cultivation, which they practice, requires large land areas. A sample survey of 1979 concluded that in Banglad esh, 20% of Garos do not possess any land, 30% have only homestead land, 30% work as hired laborers and 20% cultivate mortgaged land.

The livelihood pattern has changed a lot because of the fact that garos are acquiring a variety of skills and are in larg e numbers entering modern occupation in the cities.

Lifestyle: The natural habitats of the Garo people are the hills, hillocks, deep forests and places near fountains, springs, and other water bodies. Animals, reptiles and bird are their closest neighbours and animals that they come in contact with include rhinoceros, tigers, elephants, wild buffaloes, goyals (wild cow), dogs, deer, porcupines and rabbits. Their main professions are cultivation in the slopes of the hills, livestock farming and hunting. Handicrafts and the cottage industries are recent additions to their profession. A Mughal army commander remarked that Garos eat everything except iron. There is some exaggeration in this statement but in fact, they eat all animals except cats, which is their totem. They live in an isolated world and within their own geographic, economic and cultural boundaries and follow their own customary norms. They do not have any king but are ruled by the tribal chief.

In the past, Garos used to put on barks of trees. The common dress of modern day Garo males is jana or nengti (a narrow piece of cloth around the waist), although the Garo people of a relatively higher status wear short skirts woven by themselves. The women cover their breasts by knotting a piece of short cloth on their backs. The males also wear gamcha or dhuti and many women put on saris, shirts and trousers. Garos burn the barks of banana trunks and use their ashes for making soap and salt. Many also use the ashes as a special ingredient in making food. Fruits comprise the staple food of Garos and therefore, they hardly suffered from any shortage in food supply in the past. This contributed to their fast growth. Garos cook their food in bamboo pipes. They drink plenty of wine and entertain guests invariably with meat. On festive occasions, guests bring cocks or pigs while visiting someone's house.

The Garo language is called Achchik Katha (spoken language of the hill people). It does not have any alphabet. It is rich in proverbs, legends, rhymes and folk tales. The Garo songs are similar in melody to Bangla folk songs. Garos dance and sing in groups and have their own musical instruments. Garo dances and songs are very similar to those of the Malaysian hill tribe Orang Achlis. Like the Mymensingh ballads, the Garo language has narrative operas. According to a Garo legend, they had their scriptures written on rhinoceros skin. These scripts were lost during a journey.

It is said that a hunter from Mymensingh found a few torn pages of the manuscript in a cave of the Garo hills and published them in the newspaper Saurav. But the reproduction was hazy and the words illegible. Outwardly, they look like the Chinese pictogram. Garos speak in both Garo and Bangla. Christian missionaries tried to introduce Roman letters into the Garo language, but the effort proved unsuccessful. However, the Garo language can now easily be written in Bangla alphabet. Many Garos perform Bangla dances very well and are good at singing Bangla songs.

Garos have their own sports and games. They build houses on elevated platforms and decorate the jadaps (rooms) with the horns of buffalos and deer. In the past, they used to decorate the houses with human skulls also. These skulls were of men attacked and slain in the plains and were symbols of power, aristocracy and heroism. Garos also traded in human skulls. Garo houses have separate cowsheds and granaries. Almost every big Garo village has a big decorated house or nakpanthe at its centre. This is used for residence and recreation of the young men of the village. However, girls are not allowed to enter the house.

Social Structure: Primitive Garo community had no social classes but the British introduced a feudal system amongst them based on land ownership. The British also introduced the notion of business in the Garo society. The British replaced the barter system of exchange that they had with transactions through money. Christian missionaries converted Garos into Christians and those who accepted the new religion were given blocks of land ar eas with ownership, while in the past, the land belonged to the tribe as a collective property and was cultivated under a cooperative system.

According to a Garo legend, a woman named Nantanupanta created the earth from a handful of soil taken from the unfathomable bottoms of the sea. The version is well accepted in the Garo community. Garos are matriarchal. Husbands live in the houses of wives and are engaged in household work. The mother is the owner of all the property of a household. After her death, the youngest daughter or any daughter nominated by the mother becomes the heir and is called Nakma. The wife of a husband acquires ownership of the assets earned by him. The children are also treated as assets and are owned by the mother. They are known after the family of their mother. The mother is responsible for rearing the children. After the death of the wife, the husband has no moral right to stay in that house. However, the custom is rarely applied in practice. Daughters are more cared and loved in a family because the sons are to leave the home after marriage and are not treated well in the family if they do not marry in time. They wail at the time of leaving the home and in their new residence, they remain down-hearted in the initial days. The wife consoles him by love and care. Often, a newly married husband runs away, but is caught and brought back. Because the husbands do not own property, they care little about the family. But their wives scold them and sometimes even threaten them by the warning that they will be driven out of the house.

Polygamy is not forbidden in the Garo community. After the death of the husband, the wife can claim anybody without a wife in the husband's clan to become her new husband. In such a marriage, the bride and the bridegroom may often not match in age. After the death of the husband, a woman can have her son-in-law as her own husband, too and the daughter and the mother may live peacefully as co-wives. If, on consideration of any special situation in a clan, someone marries a minor girl, he can have sexual relationship with his mother-in-law during the period until his wife attains maturity. In the past, there was a practice of group marriage and free sex in Garo society. Now, however, extramarital sexual relationship in Garo society is seen as a crime and is liable to punishment. In case of any such event, the khamal (informal clan leader) identifies the criminal through some complex tests. The punishment for adultery is confiscation of property.

Rituals: Garos are very conservative in their outlook. In the first hundred years of their campaign, Christian missionaries found them very reluctant in accepting the new religion. Later, the missionary process was geared up and according to a survey conducted in late 1970s, about 80% of the Garos of Bangladesh have become Christians. At present, almost all Garos are Christians and only a few are Muslims. One of the major reasons why Garos have adopted Christianity is their immediate economic gain in the form of direct financial assistance offered to the newly baptised Christians. However, Garos have retained their traditional culture and customs even after being converted into Christians.

Besides traditional beliefs, Garos follow their own religion Sangshareq. They are not concerned about worshipping idols and do not bother about sin and virtue, gods and goddesses and heaven and hell. They observe thirteen or more brata (vows) and festivals in a year and pray for the fertility of the soil, safety of the harvests and protection from evil spirits, diseases and epidemics. The Sangshareq religion has elements of mantra-tantra and magic. Garos are animists and believe in dual existence of matters. They ascribe life to nature and inanimate objects and consider snakes and tigers as personised forms of dead souls. According to their belief, some men remain men at daytime, but become tigers at night. Garos name such men the Matsadu Matsabed. They believe that some trees, stones and hills are the abodes of the spirits and therefore, it si better to keep away from them. Among Garos, the people who arrange festivals, organise vows, and treat and cure patients by montra are persons with supernatural power and therefore, enjoy respect and honour in the community. These persons are named khamal or kamal. Garos do not give their children any sweet names because, they believe, such names may attract evil spirits and cause harm to them.

When someone dies, Garos sacrifice animals, offer food to the guests and observe different vows before and after the funeral rituals, so that the soul of the dead person cannot do them any harm. In the past, Garos captured people from the plains and burnt them with the body of the dead person as sacrifice. They believe that the soul of a dead man stays for some time at Chick Sung, the highest peak of the Aro mountain. Then it moves round unknown places of the vast world and at last, returns back as a spirit or gets rebirth as a human being or animal. People who commit suicide or are killed by a ferocious animal are reborn as animals. Their funeral ceremonies are observed in prolonged rituals, of which mimangkham is the most important. In that ritual, the dead body is bathed and then thoroughly anointed with oil by a woman while other women sing traditional wailing songs. Then the men wrap it in a cloth sheet. People attending the ceremony pray for the departed soul and offer gifts. The body is then shifted to the funeral pyre and while still in fire, a piece of half burnt bone is collected for burial in the house, where the deceased had lived. The spot is called khatik . A portion of the ashes collected from the pyre is spread in the field. For seven days after death, members of the family take only vegetables and offer food to the dead person. Then they celebrate ritual with rice, chicken and hem. In the evening of the day of sraddha, they hold a mourning procession. The last offering of food to the dead is marked by a feast with plenty of wine the celebrations include dances, songs, and rhythmic beating of drums.

Festivals: The moon, sun, rain, rivers and crops are like gods to Garos. In the Bangla month of Chaitra, Garos clear jungles, burn woods and leaves to ashes, and sow paddy. Then they observe Asiroka (the New Year festival) and pray for safety and security throughout the year. They believe that evil spirits may steal away ripe and harvested crops from the field and storehouses. To protect themselves against spirits, they perform religious rituals in the form of festivals under different names while sowing seeds and harvesting crops. The largest among these festivals is the Wangala. This is celebrated in the whole Garo area in full fanfare. Adults drink homemade wine, young boys and girls wear specially designed dresses, colour their skin and sing and dance wildly. They also entertain each other with drinks and in their celebrations, chose their husbands or wives. The musical instruments used in the festival include buffalo horns and drums of different size. Strong and young boys dance vigorously with shields and sw ords in hands to frighten evil spirits. These performances are part of the Sangshareq religion and aim at neutralising spirits, ghosts, and demons in two ways, by offering rogala (oblation) to them and by frightening them.

Literacy: The rate of literacy in the Garo community is higher among the women than among the men. The reason is the matriarchal system. This makes it difficult for a girl to find a husband with equal

standing. While in work or in movement, mothers hold their babies on their backs with a piece of cloth. In the Garo community, marriage within the same clan is not allowed since the boys and girls of a clan are considered as brothers and sisters. The Garo tribe is divided into ten clans. In case someone violates the principle of not marrying within the clan, he is deprived of all property rights and ousted from the village. On many occasions, if a young man of a suitable clan is liked by a girl, he is forcibly made to marry her. The clan of the bridegroom does not oppose the match. [Ali Nawaz] Banglapedia

Social Assessment work under the NATP preparation included a visit to an Adibasi village in Jhinaigati Upazila of Sherpur district in Greater Mymensingh. A note on the village is provided under section 2 of this report.

Table – 13 below provides a list of 18 districts of the country with considerable concentration of tribal population, at least about one percent or higher.

Table – 13: Districts with concentration of Tribal Population

District Number of Tribal Tribal Population % Tribal household % Tribal Population Households CHITTAGONG 1.Rangamati, CHT 40,387 223,292 53.22 55.63 2.Khagrachari, CHT 33,508 167,519 47.29 48.91 3. Bandarban, CHT 21,704 110,333 47.51 48.00 4. Chittagong 8,909 49,895 0.97 0.94 5. Cox’s Bazar 3,708 22,168 1.69 1.56 RAJSHAHI 6. Rajshahi 9,000 44,147 2.51 2.34 7. Nawabganj 4,431 23,501 2.26 2.01 8. Naogaon 14,930 74,213 3.73 3.45 9. Dinajpur 12,965 61,744 3.01 2.73 10.Joypurhat 3,806 18,561 2.52 2.43 11. Rangpur 5,914 29,629 1.39 1.37 SYLHET 12. Habiganj 7,729 39, 240 2.10 2.57 13. Moulvi Bazar 6,180 31,264 2.54 2.27 MYMENSINGH 14. Mymensingh 7,344 35,305 0.96 0.89 15. Netrokona 6,088 29,311 1.86 1.69 16. Sherpur 3,376 16,341 1.44 1.44 PATUAKHALI 17. P atuakhali 2,471 13,278 1.08 1.04 18. Barguna 1,626 8,496 1.10 1.10 BANGLADESH 233,417 1,205,978 1.20 1.13 AV FAMILY SIZE TR 5.17 AV FAMILY SIZE ALL 5.50 Source: BBS, Bangladesh Population Census, 1991. Note: Draft Population Census Report 2001 does not provide district wise breakdown of tribal population.

3. Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder analysis made in this section comprises two matrices. The first one involves listing of relevant stakeholders at various levels – national, regional, district, Upazila, Union and village. This indicates who would benefit from the project, who are likely to be affected and who are likely to shout for and against the project, often guided by group interest, rather than people’s interest. The second matrix provides a comprehensive list of issues and concerns that affect each group, again at the national to village levels.

The matrices provided in Tables 14 and 15 are prepared on the basis of literature review, experience of scientists and administrators and most importantly in the light of discussion with the primary stakeholders at the village level. a. Stakeholder Mapping

Table - 14 below provides an indicative list of stakeholders at the national to village levels, the beneficiary individuals and institutions under column 2 and non beneficiaries under column 3 and 4.

Table – 14: List of Stakeholders at the National to Village Levels Level Beneficiaries Affected Other Interest Groups National GOB: MOA, MOFL, MOFE Importers and sellers of Non-partner NGOs, Media GOB Extension Department: DAE, obsolete technology and low (printed and electronic) DLS, DOF quality inputs. Politician NARS: BARC and ARIs Bureaucracy Agricultural Universities Contractors BADC, WARPO, BWDB, BRDB, Business Associations BARD, RDA Trading Syndicates NGOS: BRAC etc. GOB Staff Union Private Extension providers, Contracting partners Division/ Research Stations of ARIs Non responsive Trading Non-partner NGOs, Media, DAE, DLS, DOF, BRDB, RDA, intermediaries: Aratder, bureaucracy Region BARD, BADC Mohajon, Stockist (Majutdar) Politician Partner NGOS Private Extension Contractors Providers and R&D participants Business Associations Contracting partners GOB Staff Union District ARI Research Stations Non responsive Trading Non-partner NGOs, Media, DAE, DLS, DOF, BADC, BRDB, intermediaries: Aratder, bureaucracy Partner NGOs Private Extension Mohajon, Stockist (Majutdar) Politician Providers and R&D participants Contractors, Contracting partners GOB Staff Union Upazila DAE, DLS, DOF, BRDB, Non responsive Trading Non-partner Local NGOs Local Government: Paurosova, intermediaries: Aratder, Local politician, Contractor agents Upazila Parishad Mohajon, Stockist (Majutdar) GOB Staff Union Partner NGOs CBO Federation PO Union Union Parishad Non responsive Trading Localized rent -seeking groups, CBO, Community Leaders intermediaries: Faria petty Tout and dalal Producers and traders in quality trader inputs/ outputs/ value chain Village UP Members Non responsive Trading Localized rent -seeking groups, Village Leaders, CIG intermediaries: Faria, petty Tout and dalal Producers and traders in quality trader inputs/ outputs/ value chain Crop, Livestock and Fish Farmer/Fisher Landless/SM Farmers Women, Adibasi Charlander b. Expectations, Issues and Concerns

Table-15 below enlists major issues and concerns of various stakeholders at the national to village levels.

Table 15: The stakeholders and the major issues and concerns Level Stakeholders Issues and Concerns / What they demand National MOA, MOFL, MOEF Relevance of project to national policies and priorities Share of resource allocated to sub -sector Resource utilization NARS, BARC, ARIs, R&D Share, R&D priorities Universities, BARD, Authority (M&E) of respective /collaboration with implementing RDA organizations Extension Agencies: Respective share and authority DAE, DLS, DOF Implementing strategies of respective agencies Public corporation: Project support for institutional strengtheining, business promotion BADC, Hortex Interested l NGOs Enh ancing role of NGO, civil society and CBOs in each component e.g., BRAC Private extension and Profit earning with service delivery, contract farming – PRAN, AFTAB, other service providers Milk vita, Arong Agribusiness company Non-partner NGO, Focusing environmental and equity concerns and some might fight for a role media in execution, monitoring Bureaucracy Administrative control, Development Coordination Contractors, business Profit making by participating or opposing depending on circumstance syndicate Politician Supporting or opposing-considering partisan interest/vote bank. Division/ ARIs, individual Strengthening respective ARI station Region/ scientist Research in specific areas that may or may not be demand -led District Extension Agencies Strong implementing role, supervision, control on subordinate offices, NGOs, LGB, CBOs, Public corporation: Project support for institutional strengtheining, business promotion BADC, Hortex Partner NGOs Strong partnership with GO, minimum control of GO Non-partner NGO Rivalry with partner NGOs, fighting for entry Private extension and Profit earning with service delivery, contract farming, subsidised inputs other service providers Bureaucracy Administrative control, Development coordination Contract or, business Own business association Politician Supporting or opposing based on local/national politics Upazila Extension Agencies: Direct fund flows, inter agency cooperation, low reporting burden, line DAE, DOF, DLS agency command, control on NGO, CBO Veterinary Centre Veterinary, Extension and AI services based at Upazila are reasonably (one) and AI sub - accessed by farmers but require making incidental expenses. centres (2 or 3 per Upazila) DOF Field Assistant – Increased facilities like transport, allowance Occasional visits only NGOs Strong partnership role Politician Distributing resources CBO (Federation) Official recognition, strong role in planning, implementing and monitoring, support for institutional strengthening, capacity building such as training.

Union Union Parishad Enhanced role of local government to plan, execute and monitor project Chair/Member/ activities. Right to monitor activities of extension staff within UP. Women Member Consolidation of village level extension plan at UP level. Field Level Extension Increased facilities like transport, allowance, office at UP complex, leading Personnel of DAE role in the UP level UEFT. Staff Unionism and frequently reported staff absence. NGO Field staff Community mobilization work. Working condition, linkage with UP, support of extension agencies Pesticide and Farmers often seek their advice to decide on what to apply, when and how Fertilizer Dealer much. They are closer to farmers and are readily available than extension staff. One risk is overuse of chemicals and low use of eco-friendly IPM methods and manure. Sugar mill field staff Extension in sugarcane only, input supply, credit to contract farmers Quack veterinarian Farmers often depend on quack veterinarians who give herbal, homeopathic, (Vaccinator/ Animal allopathic and some times human medicine for the treatment animals. They Health Worker) charge nominal fees from farmers but are readily available. Upgrading their skills by proper training seems desirable since they will in any way continue this practice and farmer will take their service. Extension Agent like Training, extension materials, toolkits, subsistence allowance, permission to LEAF of DOF charge nominal fees. Self-emp loyed Poultry DLS and Youths Department train them. They buy vaccine from DLS at and Cattle Vaccinators token price and provide vaccination service at the village level but not regularly. They can be very effective as village level veterinary extension agent. Need training, small equipment like thermo flask, regular supply of vaccine and medicine at low cost, linkage (with NGO, LGB, local communities) and support for community work. CIG (Federation)/ Need guideline, facilitation, recognition and capacity building support. Need Existing CBOs linkage with extension agencies, NGOs and private extension providers and local bodies. Village CIG (existing/ new Need guideline, facilitation, recognition and capacity building support. Need groups) linkage with extension agencies, NGOs and private extension providers and Group of 20 -25 local bodies. Commercial Formal training at Upazila and higher levels for management/ technical aquaculture and staff/ worker. poultry farms. Crop, livestock and Enhanced extension service, quality seed and other inputs, market linkage fish farmers (non- poor) UP member, Village Leadership role in CIGs. Leaders (matbor) Poor Women, Female Lack access to all sorts of extension service except under special projects. Headed Household, Need special targeting. Women Farmer Landless, SM Lack access to extension services, veterinary services and other support. Farmers, fish, Need special targeting. backyard poultry/ duck farmers Open Water Fishing Conservation of fisheries resources and prevent destructive fishing by local Communities influential groups. Need special targeting. Adibasi Customary land rights, resource conservation, protecting cultural heritage. Priority: Horticulture crops, cattle, poultry and market linkage. Charlanders Improved transport and trade network, social support during crisis months (FFW, VGD, VGF), extension and inputs for increasing pre and post-flood crops, shelter and animal feed for flood season and MFI linkage with trust- worthy NGOs.

4. Historical Contextualization – Lessons Learnt from Similar Projects

4.1 General Description a. IDA supported recent projects

The World Bank has supported ten projects aiming development of agricultural technology system in Bangladesh comprising agricultural research, training and extension. Experience of these projects is summarized below.

Table -16: Experience of executing projects in the last three decades Name of Project Commitment Disbursement Duration Outcome Sustainability Institutional (million $) (million $) of Project Development Impact 1. Agricultural and Rural 12.00 10.16 1976-83 Partial Uncertain Modest Training (ART) 2. Extension and Research 10.00 8.61 1977-82 Satisfactory Likely Significant Project (ERP) 3. Agr icultural Research 6.00 5.65 1978-84 Satisfactory Uncertain Significant Project I (ARP1) 4. Second Extension and 27.00 19.47 1982-87 Partial Uncertain Modest Research Project (ERP2) 5. Second Agricultural 8.10 4.35 1983-89 Partial Uncertain Modest Training Project (ART2) 6. Agricultural Research 24.50 19.23 1984-92 Partial Uncertain Modest Project II (ARP2) 7. Agricultural Support 35.00 22.70 1991-98 Satisfactory Likely Modest Services Project (ASSP) 8. Agricultural Research 50.00 42.86 1996-01 Satisfactory Likely Modest Management Project (ARMP) 9. Silk Development Pilot 11.35 5.88 1997-03 Satisfactory Likely Modest Project 10. Agricultural Services 5.00 4.07 1999-03 Satisfactory Unlikely Modest Innovation & Reform Project (ASIRP) TOTAL OF TEN 188.95 142.98

A total of US $ 189 million was committed by the IDA and three fourth of this commitment was disbursed against ten project in the sector. The projects were by and large successful in terms of achieving desired outcomes of meeting the immediate objectives as evident from the above Table 16 . But sustainability remains the main concern and success in institution building was in general modest and in a limited number of cases, satisfactory. This is an important finding and deserves careful consideration while formulating future pr ojects like the NATP. Table 17 further elaborates on specific project objectives, components and outcomes.

Table- 17: Outcomes against specific objectives of IDA supported agricultural projects Name of Project Objective s Components/Activities Outcomes/Contributions 1. Agricultural and Strengthen Establish 3 new ATI RDA at Bogra established Rural Training (ART) administrative Improve 4 old ATI 1976-83 framework, physical Establish one new RDA TTIs developed or improved facilities and train Establish 15 TTU manpower for the ART Establish 40 FEF In -service training provided system Build dormitories at BAU to 3000 DAE field staff Strengthen in-service Training of field staff / village extension agents. 2. Extension and Introduce Training and Train extension field staff T&V introduced Research Project Visit (T&V) system. Increase number of VEA and Infrastructure improved 1977-82 (ERP) Support adaptive train them Institutions developed research Develop research sub- Staff trained. Linkage between stations research and extension Finance contract research Reconstruct Training Units Project covered NW region 3. Agricultural Strengthen: agricultural Develop regional stations of BARC complex built Research Project I research, specially BARI Financed contract research 1978-84 (ARP) research facilities, Develop BARC headquarters Prepared national management and complex agricultural research plan scientific manpower of Develop manpower Financed training and higher BARI, and planning, overseas studies of scientific coordination and staff. monitoring functions of BARC. 4. Second Extension Extend T&V from pilot Reorganize five different T&V extended all over the and Research Project to 70% districts. crop sector extension country . 1982-87 (ERP2) Develop appropriate agencies into a unified Established DAE as unified production technologies. department (DAE). extension agency . Intensify extension Improve coconut research Enhanced supply of efforts to accelerate station of BARI. equipment and training of adoption of HYV, Recognize region level personnel. mainly for rice. adaptive research. Train research and extension personnel. 5. Second Agricultural Improve quality of mid- Establish Higher Agricultural Training quality improved and Training Project level agricultural In-service Training Institute through provision of training (ART2) 1983 -88 training. (HAITI) materials, equipment and Creation of a Training Technical Assistance for physical infrastructure. Division under the ATI, CERDI and HAITI DAE. Improve planning and management of mid- level agricultural training. Support career dev. Strategy for the BS. 6. Agricultural Consolidate Strengthen BARC Three research institute Research Project II improvements in Contract research in priority established . 1984-92 (ARP2) agricultural research areas . management achieved Establish BLRI, BFRI and BARC and BARI through ARPI. FRI (livestock, forestry and strengthened. Strengthen planning, fisheries research institutes) monitoring and Training of research Contract research program coordination of NARS scientists. enhanced. at BARC and a network of research stations.

Name of Project Objectives Components/Activities Outcomes/Contributions 7. Agricultural Support Increase crop production Improve efficiency and Prepared and adopted NAEP Services Project (particularly food coverage of technology emphasizing farmer focused, 19 91-98 (ASSP) grains). transfer to farmers. decentralized, bottom-up and Train of DAE staff and group approach in extension. Initiate production of farmers. high value export crops. Improve seed industry with Established breeder seed emphasis to rice, wheat and units. jute. Homestead agriculture Promoting homestead targeting women farmers. agriculture. Agro-business promotion with emphasis to high value Established HORTEX. horticulture crops. Strategic planning support to Enhanced NGO partnership. DAE. 8. Agricultural Increase efficiency of Enhance BARC’s role. Adoption of BARC Act 1996 Research Management NARS and thereby Increase fund flow to ARIs Preparation of national Project 1996-2001 generate profitable, in crop, forestry, fisheries research strategy (vision (ARMP) relevant and sustainable and livestock. 2020 and master plan 2000- agricultural technologies Strengthen farming system 05). research through research Strengthened demand-led extension linkage and competitive applied research demonstration of appropriate Holistic approach to farming technologies. system research. 9. Silk Development Assess competitiveness Policy reform, research, Potentials proven by piloting Pilot Project 1997-2003 of silk industry technology demonstration, BSRTI established, separate Support small-scale silk product development, market from Bangladesh Sericulture producers (mostly promotion and M&E Board women to raise income support. BSB scaled down level) commercial operation Sericulture Foundation established as a forum of GO-NGO partnership in the sector. 10. Agricultural Test and refine Implement NAEP at the Strengthened Hortex, tested Services Innovation and technology transfer Upazila, district and national partnership programs (multi- Reform Project programs to suit local levels through partnership donor and multi-stakeholder) 1999-03 (ASIRP) conditions. programs. providing extension service Enhance support to Promote export oriented at the Upazila level in efforts horticulture crops for horticulture production to further refine NAEP. export through through HORTEX HORTEX. Foundation. Test and develop Small-scale pilot trials and methods for partnership demonstration of on-farm between DAE and other water management, soil extension service fertility management, providers. weather advice and yield forecasting.

Projects numbered 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 developed considerable amount of physical infrastructures in terms of buildings and equipment while project # 2 and 4 improved existing physical infrastructure. All of these six projects contributed to building of institutions including human resource development. In addition, new extension method (T&V) was introduced and contract research system also initiated.

Projects # 7 onwards emphasiz ed more on the enhanced efficiency of the existing system, formulating and adopting appropriate policies, reorganizing the public sector research and extension institutions, building partnership with other service providers (private sector and NGOs), initiating decentralized and multi-sub-sectoral and group-based extension service, targeting disadvantaged groups like women and promoting high value agriculture.

b. IFAD supported Smallholder Agriculture Improvement Project (SAIP)

Government of Bangladesh with the assistance of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) took up a project, called Smallholder Agriculture Improvement Project (SAIP) to be implemented in Mymensingh, Sherpur and Jamalpur District covering all of the 20 Upazila and 147 Union Parishad.

The project was designed in the light of experience of a similar project implemented in the neighboring Netrokona district with assistance of the same development partner. The SAIP involves total investment of Tk. 1.3 billion. This comprises IFAD loan of Tk. 945 million, FAO grant of Tk. 84 million, local bank loan of Tk. 32 million, GOB grant of Tk. 224 million and beneficiary contribution of Tk. 13 million. The project began in June 2005 and is likely to be completed by June 2007 including two years extension. The project is executed by the DAE as lead agency in association with LGED, selected local bank, and partner NGOs.

The DAE implements the training and extension part, the LGED develops physical infrastructure like UP complex (target12 nos), village roads (target 211 kms), markets (target 24), eco-village (target 24) and boat landing facilities (target 24). The contracted NGOs will form 6,535 groups and the DAE will provide training and extension support to them. The NGOs will also mobilize savings and extend mico- credit support tom them. A total of 131,000 farm households are targeted to be reached including 13,000 adibasi households.

In Jhinaigati Upazila of Sherpur district, the SAIP implemented 593 demonstrations and provided day- long training to 6,533 persons on improved agricultural practices mostly related to crops and horticulture.

The SAIP partner NGO, BEES formed 109 groups comprising 2,048 members including 1,496 female members in (72%) 75 groups (69%). The NGO received credit fund of over Tk. 3.0 million from the project and the partner bank. The NGO has also mobilized total savings of Tk. 3.4 million. 63% of the group members received loans from the NGO. Average member savings is Tk. 1,660 against average outstanding loan of Tk. 3,180. The NGO has already repaid 45% of the bank loan, has earned Tk. 658,000 as service charge and reserved Tk. 439, 000 at the block account indicating that they are approaching financial sustainability.

Of the total 109 groups, a total of 34 are adibasi group. Adibasis comprise only about 1.5% of the population in Sherpur district and about 4% of Jhinaigati Upazila. SAIP covers 43 (39%) out of 110 villages of the Upazila while 13 out of 18 adibasi villages are reached by the project.

The project seems to have achieved quantitative output targets as evident in Jhinaigati Upazila. NGOs succeeded in organizing groups, providing organizational training, mobilizing savings, providing credit support and more importantly, targeting adibasi men and women. The DAE also trained good number of farmers and held many demonstrations. But the training and demonstration programs are unlikely to be sustained as GOB may not be able to provide operating fund once the project is closed.

More importantly, the training was heavily dependent on daily trainee allowance. Both DAE officers and trained farmers said that 120 taka daily training allowance was the driving force without which “the farmers would be disinterested to attend training classes”. The officers further remarked that “daily training allowance has become a tradition and now training cannot be managed without it”. Some officers hinted that “there are interested groups who surround Upazila offices and try to influence trainee selection and people not really interested in training but in training allowance get entry in some cases”. This affects achieving training objectives. Training planned at the grassroots level, say by the CIG and consolidated at the local UP level and approved at the Upazila could improve the situation. Both farmer and officer respondents hinted that holding training at the village level, like uthan baithok would reduce the need for paying allowance. In such case only trainers would need transport and daily allowance. Planning training at the grassroots would also ensure ownership and involvement of trainees and the training would become more need-based, a real incentive to trainees rather than training allowance.

c. IDB supported Smallholder Project in Barisal Division

IDB is supporting a smallholder agricultural project covering Barisal, Jhalokathi, Patuakhali and Barguna districts. It began in 2002 and is targeted for completion by June 2006. However, time extension is expected up to June 2008. The project approach and activities are similar to SAIP.

In Barisal district, the project covers ten Upazila and ten partner NGOs are engaged to assist group formation, organizational training and managing micro-credit. Each NGO has a target of forming 240 groups of which 50% should be groups of women. The groups formed are socially homogenous, such as Small Farmer Group, Landless and Marginal Farmer Group, Women Farmer Group etc. Each group comprises about 25 members.

The project has some targets of physical construction and equipment distribution. These include 3,200 meters irrigation drains, 300 irrigation pumps and 80 power tillers. These three items have been implemented totally. It also targets constructing ten Upazila Training Complex (5 completed) and four offices of Deputy Directors (3 completed). In addition, the project provided fund to the LGED for constructing village roads and roadside plantation.

Discussion with DAE officials in Barisal and Patuakhali revealed that quantitative targets of input distribution, construction and NGO group formation are largely met and group members are also provided usually one day training on various agricultural practices. But the result of training was not encouraging as evident from the fact that both DAE officers and trainees can not even think of any training without daily allowance to trainees.

The project implementation in the field level was delayed by tw o years and partner NGOs were contracted in the third year of the project leaving only about two years left. d. Fourth Fisheries Project (FFP)

Government of Bangladesh with financial assistance of the World Band, DFID and GEF has implemented a nation wide fisheries sector project during the period July1999 to June 2006. This has been the largest project in the fisheries sector in Bangladesh in the recent history. It comprised five major components. These are (a) Open Water Fisheries Management, (b) Shrimp and Coastal Aquaculture, (c) Aquaculture Extension and Training, (d) Biodiversity conservation studies, and (e) Institutional support.

The open water fisheries management component aimed at more sustainable management of fisheries resources in the inland rivers, canals, haor, baor and floodplains along with equitable distribution of benefits of increased production. The approach was organizing fisher folk communities in partnership with NGOs and the Department of fisheries, allocating selected water bodies to the organized fisher groups, stocking of fish fry during the monsoon season in the selected water bodies in order to increase production, making fish sanctuaries in selected rivers and open water bodies, and supporting organizational activities of the fisher groups so that they can manage resources to benefit the fishers in general rather than a handful of influential leaseholders or illegal occupants of public water bodies.

The open water fisheries management was the toughest of the five components. The project’s main task was to create community organizations in about 50 sites and partner NGOs were engaged to mobilize local communities to establish viable organizations of the fishers. It was experienced that the DOF being basically a technical department, emphasized stocking of fish fry to increase fish production without adequately considering who should participate in stocking and how the costs and benefits will be shared by thousands of fishers and non fishers in each site coming from varying socio-economic footing. The NGO’s capacity to support the organization building process was overestimated. The inevitable result was “elite capture of the fisher groups” and conflicts were rampant. Progress in both community building and managing sanctuaries and fry stocking improved as late as in the fifth year. Actually, the initial project assumption that stocking program can begin very early in year one or two was unrealistic and the DOF and other stakeholders lately realized that organization building must be given more care than just trying to increase production by fry stocking programs.

The shrimp component was included in the project without reaching consensus between the government and the development partners, particularly the DFID on certain key issues. The government always pressed hard to execute the polder rehabilitation part while the development partners pressed to undertake several studies addressing various issues and concerns like the effects of shrimp farming on the environment, poverty reduction, distribution of benefits, and lately the issue of banning wild fry collection. Lease of khas canals was another issue and the resettlement related to land acquisition came up very late.

More than one half of the project period was gone to complete the desired feasibility studies and NGOs were placed to mobilize communities and establishing community organizations in the four polders.

The outcomes of the shrimp component included a total of 12 studies, six peer reviews and documentation of the study findings. The partner NGOs conducted household as well as shrimp farm census in the four polders covering all of the 20,000 plus households and 12,000 plus ha farm area in about 6000 plus farms. It was found that, nearly one half of the shrimp farms are smaller than one ha and nearly one half of the shrimp farmers own below 1.5 acres land. The landless and marginal farms dominate the polder communities. Therefore, the project was convinced that shrimp farming benefits not only the rich, but also the small and marginal farmers. The landless however benefit indirectly by working as wage labor in the shrimp farms and they are also involved in a variety of shrimp related transport and trading activities.

With constant persuasion from the government side, the shrimp polder rehabilitation works were finally implemented during the extended period of the project (2005-2006) in only two construction seasons.

The main project activities included establishing 60 Block Committees, four Polder Committees and four Landless Committees in the four polders. The CBOs in the polders have been more spontaneous and participatory than in the open water sites mainly because of immediate cash benefits of shrimp aquaculture, a high value export commodity. Participation in the project gave them a hope of better access to water management, improved shrimp farming and therefore higher productivity and profitability.

The local communities were highly interested to participate in order to ensure quality of improved infrastruc ture and they agreed in writing to take over operation and maintenance responsibility once the polder rehabilitation works are completed.

The polder communities have mutually compensated about 300 affected households who had to give some 300 bigha land for canal re-excavation works. Getting this amount of land would have been impossible by formal land acquisition process given limited time and financial allocation. They agreed a mutual compensation package in terms of yearly rent equivalent guaranteed by the polder CBOs.

Further, the polder communities agreed a package of interim rental arrangement for the land taken for the construction of new regulators. About 150 households are paid yearly rent for about 22 acres land to make sure that construction can be started before formally acquiring the land which required about one and half years extra time. Without this arrangement, the project execution could be stopped. Actually, the complicated land acquisition process could not be completed by the expiry date of the project. But the community organizations resolved the problem by and internal, interim and mutually compensating rental arrangement, the benefited farmers paying yearly agreed rent to the affected landowners.

The FFP shrimp component showed that, community organizations can be highly useful to execute very complicated projects, provided they are organized. The polder CBOs are registered under the Cooperatives Act and therefore they are now legal entities.

The Aquaculture Extension component has been able to train about 200,000 pond operators including about 50,000 women. This component’s main achievement is developing and piloting an extension approach, called LEAF (Local Extension Agent in Fisheries). The LEAF model trains selected farmers in

the village level, provides them necessary extension materials and encourage them to reach extension message to other interested fish farmers in the same and adjoining villages. The LEAF is allowed to charge a nominal fee to compensate for his or her efforts including time spent. This approach has been appreciated by the farmers as well as the DOF. The DOF has taken it as an extension strategy.

Under the other two components, the FFP has undertaken a number of biodiversity studies for the inland, marine, river and coastal areas and developed a set of fisheries development strategies. e. Experience of Technology Transfer by a local NGO, Gono Unnayan Prochesta (GUP)

Gono Unnayan Prochesta is a reputed local NGO based at Rajoir Upazila of Madaripur district, south of the Ganges. They various activities in the region but they are especially interested in technology development and had long association with the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG).

In the agriculture sector, GUP is currently training and motivating farmers, both men and women belonging to the target group, in various technologies including:

i. Alternative seedbed ii. Seed production and preservation iii. Homestead gardening iv. Compost making and using, and v. Establishment and management of horticulture nursery

GUP operates in Madaripur, Shariatpur and Gopalganj districts covering a total 5 Upazila in the agriculture sector. Alternative seedbed is important in the area because flood damages conventional seedbeds. They popularized floating seedbeds (such as with thin layer of mud on floating weeds or jute sticks or bamboo platform).

GUP encourages farmers to preserve seeds, as far as practicable, given local weather condition, in order to ensure quality. Reliability of seed is more important than just cost of it. Therefore farmers are accepting this idea.

GUP trained the following number of farmers in 2005 with supply of seeds at cost Groundnut production 1,000 farmers 7.5 kg seed per farmer, good for one bigha land. Wheat production 900 farmers 10 kg wheat per farmer good for one bigha land Onion using root seeds 201 farmers Onion using seeds 303 farmers

It is important to note that, GUP does not pay trainee allowance. Also they do not supply any input free of cost. However, the give one lunch and pays actual traveling cost by bus or rickshaw, usually Tk. 20 or 30 per person per day.

GUP is serious in selecting trainee by consultation at the group level and with the assessment training needs and actual interest of particular trainee group in particular crop or technology and reason behind it. This consultation process ensures that proper selection rather than bringing those just interested in training allowance. After all GUP does not pay any cash allowance and the inputs are supplied at cost fixed by the Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation.

The Government projects also can gradually avoid paying trainee allowance. FFP did not pay trainee allowance, not even transport cots, but provided a workin g lunch. Charging actual cost of inputs can be implemented and it will ensure good trainee selection and actual application of training. Participatory need assessment is another way and holding training at the village level, rather than at the Upazila will eliminate the need for paying cash training allowance or transport cost.

f. Hortex Foundation

Under the ASSP a special foundation was created in 1993, called Hortex Foundation, with assistance from the project and aiming promotion of export of horticulture crops. It was registered under the Companies Act as a non-profit organization in the private sector but managed by executives coming from the Ministry of Agriculture. The Hortex Foundation started functioning in 1996 and received support from IDA projects, ASSP and ASIRP during 1996 to 2003.

The Hortex foundation achieved quantitative targets between 118 percent to 223 percent in terms of area cultivated, number of farmers reached, export volume, export value and generating employment in far ms and packing centers. But problems remained with institutional sustainability. It worked basically through one organization, BRAC, a reputed NGO and could not successfully transfer expertise to private sector entrepreneurs. BRAC has already developed in-house capacity to support all spheres of value chain in vegetables production for export and has successfully obtained Eurogap certification for exporting fresh vegetables.

Bangladesh agriculture is still predominantly rice-based and cereal based. In 2003-04, about 77% of about 35 million ha cropped area was under paddy cultivation and about 82% under cereals. Only a few of the non-cereal crops including fruits and vegetables and minor cereal (mainly maize) experienced some growth during 1998-2004. Non-crop agriculture, particularly fisheries and livestock grew faster. This trend is consistent to the comparative advantage within the farming system general economic trend, consumer preference and global economy. Horticulture crops, fisheries and livestock are likely to grow with the economic growth because of higher income elasticity of the produce. Demand for cereal crops will not increase proportionate to growth because people will be consuming less cereal as income level goes up. Hence, diversification to high value agriculture has unexplored potential. However, food security will remain a priority and farmers will not be encouraged to reduce cereals area unless food security is achieved.

In general, high value agricultural commodities tend to demand both higher labor and capital and involve higher risks because the produces are usually perishable and prices are highly flexible. This is a constraint to small and marginal farmers benefiting out of it. However, higher demand for labor per unit area of land be nefits agricultural labor, usually coming from the very poor rural households. Further, the high value commodities have high prospect of value addition and value chain can engage large number of employees and entrepreneurs, mostly from the rural poor households, including women.

The World Bank document, Bangladesh Development Series, Paper 7 noted several constraints to enhancing growth of horticulture crops. These include limited research capacity to develop and disseminate technology, low productivity, absence of food safety standards and regulation and unorganized smallholder producing sector not properly linked to high value markets. In addition, there are some special problems related to export of horticulture crops including limited cargo space and cold storage facility, inability of maintaining cool chain and poor packing and lack of awareness in proper care in handling during transportation. Past efforts have produced good results but on a limited scale. Private sector initiatives in contract farming and value chain are coming up to a limited extent and appear to have good prospect. g. BRAC

BRAC, the largest of about 1,000 NGOs operating in Bangladesh has considerable involvement in the agriculture sector. BRAC primarily operates with its informal groups, comprised predominantly of rural women, called Village Organization (VO). BRAC had 142,117 groups with a total of 4,858,763 members (97% women). BRAC’s main programs in Bangladesh include: : · Micro-credit: Tk. 26 billion disbursed in 2004. Typical term is one year, recovered in equal weekly to monthly installments with 15% flat rate of interest. Reported recovery performance is about 99 percent.

· Education: Operates 49,000 schools in remote rural areas and contributes to about 11% primary school enrolment, nationally. About 65% of the BRAC school children are girls. About 2.8 million children completed primary education at the BRAC schools. · Social Development, Human Rights and Legal Services program is aimed at enhancing social awareness and access to services and institutions. The BRAC Social Development (SD) programs comprise two frameworks – an asset based sustainable livelihoods and rights based social assets. BRAC encourages the VO members to establish Ward and Union level organizations, called Palli Somaj (15 to 25 members at village level) and Union Somaj (27 members). The ADB assisted BRAC to promote capacity building of Women UP representatives extended to 14 districts.

In addition to the above, BRAC has very large involvement in agriculture and established considerable infrastructure and institutional capacity under the Economic Development program. BRAC’s agriculture related infrastructure includes:

· Soil testing laboratory - 1 Nos, annual capacity 4,000 samples · Poultry farms and hatcher ies – 6 Nos, annual capacity 13.5 million chicks · Animal Feed Mills - 3 Nos, annual capacity 40,000 mt · Feed nutrient analysis lab - 1 NOS. at Gazipur · Feed distribution depot - 50 Nos · Broiler processing plant - 1 Nos, 600 mt poultry meat processed · Prawn Hatchery - 8 Nos, annual capacity, 15 million prawn post larvae · Fish Hatcheries - 4 Nos, annual capacity 5,000 kg fish spawn · Seed Processing Centre - 2 Nos, annual capacity 3,500 mt seeds · Seed production farms - 23 Nos annual capacity 5,200 mt · Bull station - 1 No annual capacity 125,000 doses semen · Trained inseminators - 748 persons · Poultry workers - 50,805 persons, benefited 2.11 million people · Pond aquaculture - 138,090 persons received aquaculture training 134,284 beneficiaries in pon d aquaculture (90% women) 136,120 ponds under aquaculture by BRAC beneficiaries 11,594 hectares pond area (of the beneficiaries) · Inland open water fisheries - 39 water bodies (beel) managed by BRAC groups of fishers - 12,645 fishers organized in 41 Up azila around 39 water bodies · Crop sector extension - Trains target VO members (land below 0.2 ha) on vegetable production and crop diversification - 340,550 persons benefited - 74,100 acres under maize cultivation - 83,500 acres under HYV rice - 59,000 acres under hybrid rice · Vegetable export - 472 mt fresh vegetables - 1,334 mt potato - 100 mt beans - Received EUREPGAP certification - Partnership with HORTEX Foundation. - h. PETRRA Sub Project for Resource-Poor Farm Households

BARI and BRRI have executed a sub project during 2002-04 called “Farmers’ Participatory Research on Integrated Rice Based Farming for Improved Livelihoods for Resource Poor Farm Households” under the main project Poverty Elimination through Rice Research Assistance (PETRRA) of the IRRI. The sub project was implemented in five locations - Rangpur, Rajshahi, Noakhali, Barisal and Faridpur, covering a total of 241 farm household, 50 each from the first four and 41 from the last site. The selected farm household were drawn from Landless (below 0.2 ha), marginal (0.2 to 0.5 ha) and small (0.5 to 1 ha) 38

holdings. The subproject interventions included cultivating modern HYV and hybrid rice replacing local and existing HYVs, homestead agriculture (mainly vegetables), fisheries, poultry and livestock.

The project approach was identifying and validating suitable technologies and helping farmers to apply them and increase productivity. There was a gender and poverty focus to include 50% women farmers and 100% selected farmers were landless, small and marginal farmers.

A four member team of BARC evaluated the subproject in the five sites. From each household one woman and one man were interviewed.

The evaluation found:

· About 62% increase of rice yield, from 1.95 mt/ha to 3.16 mt/ha in the farmers’ field. Range was 18.5% (Rangpur) to 100% in Barisal and Rajshahi. Major contributor was change of varieties. · In about 70% of the participating farmers, food security improved in terms rice provisioning ability (producing or purchasing rice). · Farmers made more efficient use of homestead area (including roof top, shady area, boundary fencing) and boundary dyke, ails. Average vegetable harvest varied from 316 kg/yr for the landless to 655 kg/yr for small farmer. · Livestock and productivity increased by 280% for the marginal farmers, 273% for landless and 178% for small farmers. · Fish pond productivity increased from 51 kg/farmer to 73 kg/farmer. · Women’s participation in homestead agriculture increased and their role in the household and the community enhanced. · Food habit changed, increasing vegetables, eggs and fish consumption and reduced rice consumption. · Recommended en hanced partnership between local NGOs and ARIs to better serve the needs of the participant farmers and farm women.

The PETRTA sub project being executed by major ARIs, it was possible to engage senior to mid-level scientists to manage the activities down to farmers’ field. It is fine for experimentation. But wider replication requires involving field level extension staff. The result may not remain so favorable.

4.2 Lessons Learnt

A brief review the development projects implemented in the agriculture sector over the last three decades reveal that:

The donor assisted GOB projects contributed to massive infrastructure building in agricultural research, education and extension support. The early projects had large civil works, equipment, transport as w ell as recruitment. Later , emphasis was diverted to institutional strengthening through training, O&M support and the recent ones supported policy formulation and reforms. The GOB projects to a great extent achieved the output and outcome targets but institutional sustainability remained a major concern.

A number of donor assisted projects experimented and replicated various extension methods, starting from the T&V to the present Revised Extension Approach. Discussion with scientists, educationists and extension experts revealed that mere change of approach does not help the farmers. Ensuring service to farmers require more transparent and accountable delivery system, partnership with local government, community based organizations, research-extension-farmer linkage and an one stop integrated service centre at the UP level.

It was evident that NGOs having regular program in the area have planned to continue services while those coming from other areas are closing immediately after expiry of the project contract.

The Department of Fisheries under the Fourth Fisheries Project has developed and piloted an extension approach called Local Extension Agent in Fisheries. DOF trained progressive fish farmers, provided them extension materials and simple tools. They are now delivering fisheries extension service to other farmers in the same village or surrounding villages. This has been accepted by the DOF as a future extension strategy.

5. Present Agricultural Research and Extension Systems

5.1 Research a. Current Status of Agricultural Research Systems

National Agricultural Research System (NARS) as constituted in Bangladesh includes an apex research organization, the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) and ten Agricultural Research Institutions in the public sector. The ten public sector ARIs are Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Bangladesh Rice Research Institutes (BRRI), Bangladesh Jute Research Institute (BJRI), Bangladesh Sugarcane Research Institute (BSRI), Soil Resources Development Institute (SRDI), Fisheries Research Institute (FRI), Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute (BLRI), Bangladesh Forest Research Institute (BFRI), Bangladesh Tea Research Institute (BTRI) and Bangladesh Institute for Nuclear Agriculture (BINA). The ten ARIs are under administrative control of four ministries – the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock (MOFL), Ministry of Environment and Forest and the Ministry of Commerce (MOC). The newly established Bangladesh Sericulture Research and Training Institute (BSRTI) is not yet fully integrated with the NARS.

Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) established under an Act of 1973 is the apex body in agricultural research. The BARC Act amended three times, latest in 1996 widened its roles to include priority setting, coordinating, monitoring, reviewing, evaluating and human resource development of the ARIs.

Of the ten ARIs, six are under the administrative control of the MOA (BARI, BRRI, BJRI, BSRI, SRDI and BINA), two under the MOFL (FRI and BLRI), one under the MOEF (BFRI) and one under MOC (BTRI). All except two institutes operate under respectiv e Acts. The exceptions are BFRI and SRDI who operate as attached departments under the MOEF and MOA respectively.

Table 18 provides basic information of the public sector agricultural research institutes. The history of ARIs goes back to 1950s. The ARIs have total staff strength of 5,856 including 1,514 scientists against total sanctioned position of 6,890 including 1,913 scientists. About 21% of the scientist positions and 13% of staff positions were vacant, the vacancies not really high in Bangladesh standard considering difficulty of recruiting scientific staff.

Table 18: Agricultural Research Institutes at a glance SL Name of Institute Year of Administrative Areas of Current Staff (number) Establishment Ministry Responsibility Scientist Support Total 1 Bangladesh Agricultural 1973 Agriculture Coordination, 55 173 228 Research Council prioritization (81) (180) (261) 2 Bangladesh Rice 1970 Agriculture Rice research 259 346 605 Research Institute (304) (386) (690) 3 Bangladesh Agricultural 1976 Agriculture All crops except 503 1,683 2,186 Research Institute sugarcane, tea, jute (617) (1,993) (2,610) 4 Bangladesh Jute Research 1951 Agriculture Jute research 129 322 451 Institute (147) (339) (486) 5 Bangladesh Sugarcane 1973 Agriculture Sugarcane research 73 180 253 Research Institute (84) (194) (278) 6 Bangladesh Institute of 1984 Agriculture Nuclear technology 76 236 312 Nuclear Agriculture in Agriculture (87) (245) (332) 7 Soil Resource 1983 Agriculture Soil survey, 102 325 427 Development Institute categorization (166) (360) (526) 8 Bangladesh Tea Research 1958 Commerce Tea research 60 182 242 Institute (82) (222) (304) 9 Bangladesh Livestock 1984 Fisheries and Livestock and 55 69 124 Research Institute Livestock poultry (64) (93) (157) 10 Fisheries Research 1984 Fisheries and Fisheries 48 171 219 Institute Livestock (64) (173) (237) 11 Bangladesh Forest 1955 Environment Forestry 154 655 809 Research Institute and Forest (217) (792) (1,009) TOTAL 1,514 4,342 5,856 (1,913) (4,977) (6,890) Note: Figures in the parentheses are sanctioned positions. The differences between the figures with and without parentheses are vacant positions.

The coordinating role of the BARC in the NARS is said to be constrained with (a) limited autonomy of the BARC Governing Body, (b) lack of authority of the BARC to channel resources to the ARIs who receive funds directly from the respective ministries, and (c) lack of explicit provisions for direct involvement of the Universities, NGOs, and private sector to participate in the NARS. The first and the last ones are very important and deserve immediate attention and all stakeholders agree to this view. There is however difference on the second one. Some stakeholders see it as unnecessary bureaucracy and it is argued that the NARS with enhanced role of BRAC should lead priority setting in agricultural research and once such priorities are set, the individual ARIs should be able to access funding sources through respective ministries. But everybody agrees on the need for strengthening the role of BARC and reducing administrative complexities at the ministry level.

A number of problems of the ARIs based on the World Bank document titled Revitalizing the Agricultural Technology System in Bangladesh (2005) and stakeholder consultation are noted below :

· Frequent changes of senior positions contributed to weakening leadership and continuity of programs and lack of well trained and adequate scientists. · Overambitious work program with limited scientific staff. · Limited operating fund to carry on need based research programs on own initiative. · Weak oversight role by the BARC. · Weak linkage between research and extension - lots of work at research stations but without follow up validation at farmer field. · Weak working relation with institutes beyond ARIs such as Universities, NGOs and private sector. · Inadequate collaboration with international organizations. · Low capacity to use of ICT, biotechnology, informatics etc . · Low incentive – in-attractive salary structure, poor working condition, low scope for further studies, training and career building without personal contact with overseas institutions and etc. · Personalization of research – since individual scientists, particularly the junior ones lack scope to further studies and research, they try to find research assignment through personal correspondence with overseas universities and research institutions. Such project hunt may not alw ays match local priorities.

The World Bank document titled Revitalizing the Agricultural Technology System in Bangladesh suggested the following in order to strengthen the research programs of the ARIs:

· Rationalization of organizational structure and redirecting research on current priorities; · Redirecting research focus to include priority areas like (a) natural resource management, (b) socio-economic research, (c) inbreeding problem of fish hatcheries, (d) environmentally sound smallholder shrimp farming, (e) livestock and poultry, (f) post- harvest care and quality management particularly of high value agriculture; · Enhanced role of BARC in prioritizing, coordinating and overseeing agricultural research; · Enhancing allocation of resources including operating fund; and · Human resource development of the NARS. b. SWOT Analysis of Agricultural Research Systems

Table 19 shows a simplified SWOT analysis of the major ARIs especially relevant to the NATP. The ARIs most relevant to the NATP include BARC as the apex body, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute (BLRI) and Fisheries Research Institute (FRI). BLRI and FRI are important for the NATP focus on livestock, dairy, poultry, fisheries and shrimp as high value

agriculture while BARI and BRRI are important multi crop and rice research. In addition to the ARIs, the SWOT analysis includes Universities, NGOs and private sector as potential contributors to agricultural research in the near future.

Table – 19: SWOT Analysis of the Research Systems Institute Strength Weakness Opportunities Threat BARC 1. Apex body 1. Limited authority 1. Enhanced authority 1. Proposed revision 2. Legal authority 2. Limited funding 2. Clarity of defining of Act and 3. Good physical 3. Operating fund too authority, role by institutional reform facilities inadequate revising Act. do not materialize 4. Continued GOB 3. Reorganizing 2. Bureaucratic and donor support interference continues 5. Linkage with external organizations BARI 1. Legal authority 1. Limited funding 1. Rationalization of 1. Restructuring and 2. Large institution 2. Shortage of well substation network redirecting denied by with nationwide trained staff 2. Cooperation with the GOB bureaucracy substation network 3. Limited operating other ARI, university, 3. Continued GOB fund NGO, private sector and donor support. 3. Reorganization BRRI 1. Legal authority 1. Limited funding 1. Good image 1. Not enough 2. Large institution 2. Shortage of well 2. Good linkage with feedback from with nationwide trained staff IRRI ext ension. substation network 3. Limited operating 3. Reduced yield gap 3. Continued GOB fund. between research and and donor support. farmer BLRI 1. Legal authority 1. Frequent change of 1. GOB provides top 1. Instability 2. Good physical top positions leaders on sustainable continues in senior facilities 2. Limited funding basis positions 3. Continued GOB 3. Unstable operating 2. Funding improved 2. Redirecting and donor support fund 3. External linkage research agenda not 4. Poor external improved getting priority linkage 4. Redirecting 5. Limited substations research agenda FRI 1. Legal authority 1. Lack trained 1. Redirecting focus 1. Regional research 2. Good physical manpower to resolve inbreeding stations in the coastal facilities 2. Limited funding problem in areas remain 3. Continued GOB 3. Unstable operating hatcheries, shrimp, understaffed and and donor support fund socio-economic. under utilized. 4. Coastal research 4. Poor external 2. Public private stations linkage partnership Public Sector 1. Experienced 1. Exiting poor 1. Good network with 1. Student unrest and Agricultural faculty linkage with ARIs, external world. political disturbance 2. Good library, Lab NARS 2. Good linkage with Universities 3. Teacher student field problems interaction through thesis 4. Good linkage with students and teachers external academic as research guide and research institutes NGOs 1. Close relation with Lack trained 1. Good market May lack institutional farmers and CBOs. scientists linkage sustainability 2. Poverty, gender, target group focus 2. Cost-efficient 3. Need based and adaptive research Private 1. Good relation with 1. Lack trained 1. Good market 1. Profit motive Companies farmer and service scientists linkage 2. May lack providers 2. May lack poverty institutional 2. Need based and focus 2. Cost-efficient sustainability. adaptive research

5.2 Extension a. Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE)

The DAE descended from the East Pakistan Directorate of Agriculture established in 1950. The department has undergone several institutional changes and in 1982 it was reorganized comprising six directorates. Over the last 55 years, a number of Agricultural Research Institutes, Agricultural Universit ies, and an Autonomous Agricultural Development Corporation were established with special mandates in agricultural research, education and input distribution and DAE concentrated its efforts in extension. There is another important extension department, the Agriculture Information Service (AIS), separate from the DAE and functioning as an agency under the Ministry of Agriculture. The AIS is engaged in disseminating information through electronic and printed media while the DAE is engaged in field based extension service and this report concerns the DAE part of the extension system.

DAE Extension Models

As the leading organization in the agricultural extension system, the DAE has been involved in experimenting and working with a variety of extension models. The recent ones evolved since the introduction of the Training and Visit System (T&V) in the late 1970s under the IDA assisted Extens ion and Research Project.

Training and Visit (T&V)

The T&V was a continuous process of disseminating pre-formulated extension messages to pre-selected farmers, called contact farmers, in groups of ten in each locality at the village level in fortnightly group meetings. Each of about 12,600 extension workers of the DAE maintained a list of 80 farmers to visit regularly and it was assumed that each contact farmer would share the learning with other 9 farmers around him. Thus, it was assumed that each extension worker would serve 800 farmers.

The T&V was hoped to function as two-way information sharing - extension worker delivering messages to contact farmers and having feedback from the farmers on field problems and refer ing them to subject matter specialists, if needed, and the DAE interacting with research institutes. The T&V system was designed very carefully and with tremendous efforts. It could function well, should the system were accountable to people and linked to local government.

The T&V system continued up to late eighties in a few years of its nation wide replication. Noted strengths of the T&V include: (a) strengthening DAE as an extension provider at the village level through increased staff, training and creating facilities like accommodation and transport, (b) it helped DAE identify several weaknesses of the extension system and the demand for a group approach emerged.

The system was discontinued in view of several weaknesses such as (a) rigidity, (b) top-down nature of execution, (c) farmers kept at the recipient side, (d) gave attention to affluent farmer and very rarely targeted smallholders as contact farmer, (e) targeting was not even imagined, and (f) the assumed linkage between research and extension could not be improved.

Revised Extension Approach

The learning of the Extension and Research Project (ERP) and experimenting with the T&V led the DAE to think further and the outcome was taking up of Agricultural Support Services Project (ASSP) with the assistance of the World Bank implemented during 1992-99. The stated Revised Extension Approach (REA) introduced under the ASSP is based on five principles:

(i) Responsiveness to farmers’ information needs: Using Farmers Information Needs Assessment (FINA) and Problem Census Card (PCC) at the block level (cluster of villages served by a DAE extension worker) to be aggregated at Upazila level. (ii) Decentralization: Responsibility of planning, budgeting, implementing, monitoring and evaluation of extension activities be decentralized at block, Upazila and district levels. (iii) Targeting: Enhancing focus on small and marginal farmers and women farmers. (iv) Using wide range of extension methods including farmer training, sharing experience of successes through exposure visits, organizing rallies and fairs, publishing printed materials like posters, leaflets, bulletins, and publicity through media like radio, TV and newspaper and folk song/drama. (v) Using group approach rather than individual approach.

The strength of the REA compared to the T&V is its multidimensional, multi sectoral, multi-agency involvement, partnership with NGOs, diversity in the use of approach, better targeting weaker groups like women and SM farmers and widening focus from crop fields to homestead agriculture. Although the result achieved was stated to be “satisfactory” sustainability remained an issue and a follow up project had to be taken to continue the efforts. This implies that desired institution building was a serious constraint.

Agricultural Services Innovation and Reform Project (ASIRP) was taken as a follow up project of the ASSP and implemented during 1999-2003 with assistance from the same development partner, IDA.

The ASSP and ASIRP together helped GOB formulating, adopting and further refining the New Agricultural Extension Policy. There has been modest improvement in research and extension linkage and feedback from farmers. Decentralized extension services at the Upazila level is some how effective but coordination with other extension partners still remains weak. On the group approach in extension, the DAE still needs to institutionalize the process. Linkage with rural local government, the Union Parishad must be firmly established. The performance of the service delivery is still dependent on the availability of fund through development project. b. Department of Livestock Services (DLS)

The Department of Livestock Services is an extension agency under the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock. The DLS is responsible for curative and preventive healthcare of all animals through out the country along with providing extension services to the farmers. The DLS has network of service delivery outlets down to Upazila level. At the Upazila level, they have two offices, one is delivering veterinary services, both curative and preventive, and is headed by a veterinary surgeon, while the other one provides general extension service including executing farmer training programs and advising farmers. The latter one is headed by a Livestock Officer, who could be veterinary or animal husbandry graduate. In addition, each Upazila has a couple of Artificial Insemination (AI) Centers or Sub-Centers, providing AI service to improve breed quality of local cattle. Apart from these field based services, the DLS operates a number of cattle, dairy, goat, sheep, buffalo, poultry and duck farms aiming breed development along with supply of quality semen, chick, calf, eggs etc to farmers to help them improve productivity.

The department has total staff of 8,426 of which 1,546 are in the professional category. The DLS often demand creation of positions of Field Assistants at the Union level to enhance their service delivery network. This is however unlikely to materialize because of the changed strategy of the GOB to downsize public sector extension service and instead to develop linkage with the private sector and NGOs who can participate more effectively to reach farmers at the grassroots. The DLS could provide training and ensure availability of vaccine, medicine etc of good quality rather than doing everything by the GOB. The GOB role then could become more regulatory and supportive rather than direct service delivery.

medicine because life of animal is very important to them. It is often said that, death of a cow affects a farmer more severely than death of a son. Because, the cow is a source of income and valuable asset today and it is always an asset while son could be an asset in the future provided he succeeds to earn good income and do support parents at old age. Therefore, farmers are ready to contribute for the sustenance of the veterinary and livestock services at the grassroots and they do contribute informally, to meet incidental expenses of DLS staff visiting village or the DLS providing curative or preventive service even at the Upazila centre.

The weakness of the DLS is its inability to reach farmers at the grassroots on a regular basis not only because of limited manpower, but also because of limited supply of medicine, vaccine etc. and absence of operating fund to maintain cool chain facilities (thermo flasks, freeze etc .) to preserve vaccine and medicine. c. Department of Fisheries (DOF)

History:

The Department of Fisheries is nearly a century old organization established in 1908 under the Provincial Government of Bengal, Government of British India. The department was merged with the Department of Agriculture in 1910 and went through several restructuring either working as a separate directorate or as part of the Directorate of Agriculture. DOF was abolished in 1923 considering inadequate functions and limited funding and it was revived again in 1942.

At closure of British rule, office of the Directorate of Fisheries of Bengal was shifted from Calcutta to Comilla. In the initial years after partitioning, the directorate mainly looked after welfare of fishers and fish marketing.

In 1950, the Government of East Bengal enacted Fish Act, 1950 mainly aiming conservation of fisheries resources and this is still the foundation of all fisheries related acts and rules. As early as in 1950, the DOF managed small scale nurseries of major carps and distributed fries to interested farmers for pond aquaculture. Initially DOF had mandates in both fisheries research and extension. In 1954, its research and extension functions were vested to two separate wings under the same department. After independence in 1971, a Marine Fisheries wing was added to the DOF. Much later, in 1984, Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute (BFRI) was established and since then the BFRI has been mandated fisheries research and DOF concentrated its efforts in fisheries extension.

DOF is also relieved of marketing function, apart from the Quality Control for the export market, predominantly frozen fish and shrimp and dry fish. DOF’s role in quality control for local market is nearly non-existent. Another Government Agency, the Bangladesh Fisheries Development Corporation was created during Pakistan period in 1964 and revived in 1973 and was largely involved in popularizing mechanized fishing boats among the coastal and marine fishers and procuring, processing and marketing fish mainly from the major catching areas to urban centers. BFDC is still involved in it but on a reduced scale while private sector has quite successfully taken over this role.

Functions:

Institutional study of the Fourth Fisheries Project made a list of as many as 22 functions of DOF. These include:

· Initiating and advising GOB on policy formulation · Initiating enactment or amendment of fisheries related laws and rules · Implementing policies such as the New Fisheries Management Policy · Formulate, execute, monitor and evaluate fisheries related development projects · Monitor and evaluate and take up programs under the revenue budget · Ensure intra and inter agency coordination

· Disseminate technology · Promote welfare of fish farmers and fisher s with emphasis to the poor and women · Develop own manpower through training and support manpower development in the NGO and private sectors · Enforce quality control of both inputs and outputs in the whole supply chain · Liaise with international and national organizations · Coordinate development and investment related to the sub-sector.

The list of 22 functions, somehow condensed above reveals that anything and everything about fisheries - be it inland, coastal or marine; capture or aquaculture; falls under the jurisdiction of the DOF either for direct execution or institutional linkage. DOF functions, as noted in the earlier paragraphs exclude fisheries research which is direct responsibility of another organization, the FRI.

Organizational Structure:

DOF is a reasonably large organization comprising total manpower of 4,411 under the revenue budget as of 2001. This include 615 class I cadre officers, 206 class I non-cadre officers, 139 class II officers, 2,251 class III staff (clerical and Field Assistants) and 1,154 class IV staff (such as peon).

The DOF is headed by a Director General and six Directors or equivalent positions each heading a wing. The functions of the wings are however loosely defined and several attempts to reorganize were unsuccessful and this seems a priority area to enhance effective functioning of the department.

The DOF has outlet up to Upazila level (about 470) through 64 district level and five division level offices. At the Upazila level DOF has just four staff – Upazila Fishery Officer (UFO) or Senior Upazila Fishery Officer, an Assistant Fishery Officer (AFO), a Field Assistant and an Office Assistant cum Accountant. In some Upazila, with development project, an Extension officer is added. DOF tried for quite long time to place field staff down to UP but it never materialized and is unlikely to materialize.

Weaknesses of the DOF include its staffing limited to Upazila level and that too with just one Field Assistant. The Field Assistants and Assistant Fishery Officers lack professional training while the lone Upazila Fishery Officer remains mostly busy in desk work and correspondence with the district and higher offices rather than helping farmers at the field level. Linkage between fisheries research and extension is very limited.

LEAF:

DOF seems to have abandoned the idea of placing staff below Upazila level and instead has developed an alternative approach to promote Local Extension Agents in Fisheries (LEAF). Under the Fourth Fisheries Project, the DOF has trained male and female (30%) groups of farmers in 200 Upazila and identified some of the successful and interested trainee farmers as potential extension agent as a link between other farmers and DOF to deliver extension messages. The selected extension agent are a bit educated, innovative and are often engaged in input supply at the village level and have already established linkage with good number of fish farmers. DOF provides them training, simple water testing and other aquaculture tools, extension materials etc. so that they can advise other farmers to mange aquaculture ponds more profitably. This has proven successful during piloting under the Fourth Fisheries Project and the DOF wishes to replicate them more widely as an extension strategy.

d. SWOT Analysis of Existing Delivery Systems

Table- 20 provides a SWOT analysis of the existing extension delivery systems. It covers GOB extension agencies as well as NGO and private delivery systems. Each has advantages and disadvantages. The public extension systems has nation wide cover but are dissociated from people. The NGOs are fine at the local level but lack sustainability while the private ones are likely to be run by profit motives, rather than service delivery aspirations. The matrix below analyzes all of these.

Table – 20 : SWOT Analysis of Extension Delivery Systems Extension Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat System DAE 1. Well formulated policy 1. Good policy but low 1. Linkage with 1. Inflexibility of the package (NAP, NAEP) implementation other agencies system continues 2. Large department with 2. Staff lack and local 2. Lack of trained officer (SAAO) down accountability and staff government institutionalization to UP and block level. unionism paralyses the 2. Train farmer, 3. Partnership with 3. Strong Training Institutes, system private local government, ATIs, CERDI etc. 3. Inadequate extension private sector not 3. Has experience of maintenance and providers encouraged from executing a number of operating fund under 3. Staff training above innovative projects in revenue budget and institutional collaboration with NGOs. 3. Unstable funding capacity 4. Has collaboration with efforts closed once building. research and education project funding ceases 4. Inadequate external linkage DLS 1. GOB initiated policy 1. Yet to adopt policy. Linkage with 1. Inflexibility of the formulation and making of 2. Weak other agencies system continues strategies implementation and local 2. Lack of 2. Services are highly arrangement government institutionalization demanded by farmers even on 3. Field service weak, 3. Partnership with payment lack public local government, accountability private sector not 4. Yet to introduce encouraged from local extension agent above DOF 1. Good policy package and 2. Strategies yet to be Linkage with 1. Inflexibility of the sets of strategies formulated approved by the GOB other agencies system 2. Service highly demanded 2. Weak and local 2. Lack of in the case of high-value implementation government institutionalization aquaculture like shrimp, even 3. Field service limited 3. Partnership with on payment to Upazila level local government, 3. LEAF piloted and accepted 4. LEAF yet to be private sector not as strategy widely replicated encouraged from above NGOs 1. Pro-poor and most Unsustainable and Enhance linkage Service discontinuity beneficiaries are women and most NGOs with CBOs and landless. discontinue once LGB 2. Partnership with CBOs development projects are closed Private Sector: 1. Demand-led 1. Commercial motives Linkage with Will not be interested Dealers, Input rather than service research, where profit is low or suppliers, 2. Closest to farmers delivery. training and gestation period is high Output 2. Some might extension Purchasers 3. Direct interaction misguide farmers agencies motivated by self 4. Mutual benefits interest. 3. Some might lack expertise.

6. Issues of Significance

Chapter -5 provided an overview of the agricultural research and extension systems along with relevant constraints. This chapter focuses important issues pertinent to the research and extension systems.

6.1 General Issues a. Inclusion and equity

Traditional low intensive agriculture is less dependent on external inputs like chemical fertiliz er, modern seeds and equipment. It is therefore poor-friendly and poorer farmers can participate in and benefit from it. With decreasing per capita availability of land, low-intensive agriculture, including fisheries and livestock, is unable to support the growing population. Intensification is therefore inevitable and new technological interventions begun in Bangladesh agriculture since 1960s. This has helped increasing productivity, particularly of rice, potato, fish and poultry mainly through introduction of modern varieties of seeds, agrichemicals (fertilizer, pesticide), modern equipment (mechanized irrigation, thresher, tiller etc.). This development has helped Bangladesh near self-sufficiency in rice and considerable crop diversification, despite doubling of population in about three decades and decreasing crop land nearly one percent annually. But this has been accompanied with some degree of inequality.

Intensification helped benefiting the landowners and enterprising farmers more than the landless. The landless and land poor are also benefited through increased wages and work opportunities. But those without active male labor force remained excluded to a great extent because many agricultural works outside of homestead area employ male labor rather than female labor. This is changing now and the rapidly growing intermediate technology in farm mechanization is increasing employment of both male and female labor. Example is increased use of power tiller and irrigation pump employing male labor as driver and mechanics but the same engine used for threshing is employing female labor winnowing crops. Besides, use of power tiller engine in husking machine reduced workload of women giving them opportunity to devote more time in childcare and various productive activities like poultry and other home based agriculture. So, there are instances that technology not necessarily displaces labor. It can benefit all, including landless and women, although not equitably.

Some of the technological interventions in the past have contributed to some degree of displacement of sharecroppers and marginal farmers. These are elaborated below:

Displacement of sharecroppers: Theoretically, labor saving technology and increasing profitability per unit area of land encourage landowners managing own land rather than sharecropping out, while traditional technology favors engaging sharecroppers. Sharecropping has been a traditional mode of production in Bangladesh and it helped many of the landless and land-poor households to participate in farming. This opportunity is shrinking as more and more farmers started cultivating nearly the whole of the agricultural area.

One example of the displacement of sharecroppers was massive expansion of commercial shrimp farming in the coastal region. Landowners found it more profitable to lease out land to shrimp farming entrepreneurs who offered gradually increasing rent and later the owners learnt shrimp farming and made own shrimp farms rather than sharecropping land for rice cultivation. Another example is converting paddy land to aquaculture ponds in Mymensingh region. These have increased profitability per ha land area but the sharecroppers and marginal farmers have lost tenancy right. Many of the displaced sharecroppers and marginal farmers became wage labor. Others entered rural non farm sector, often related to the new activities like aquaculture. With the trend of increasing real wages and economic diversification they may gradually overcome economic losses but regaining social status requires longer period. A sharecropper or marginal farmer becoming wage labor in shrimp farm or a rickshaw van driver could earn more than a very small tenant farmer but he is socially valued lower than before.

Displacement of sharecropper is therefore viewed negatively in the rural communities as it changes social status of the affected households from share cropp er , borga chasi to day labour, din major. Borga chasi is socially better respected than din major even if a din major might earn higher than a borga chasi.

Displacement of marginal farmers - Too small and uneconomic holdings: It was observed in Village Fedainagar of Patuakhali that owners of too small holdings, below 0.5 ha, tend to sharecrop out and then work as day labor. Very small holdings with present level of technology and intensification can not support even a small household of 5 to 6 persons. The marginal landowners therefore choose to work as day labor. In contrast, owners of 1.0 to 1.5 ha holdings, sharecrop some additional land to make the holding a bit economic and such households prefer sharecropping rather than wage employment because of their social position. b. Pro-poor, intermediate, and women-friendly technology

Some level of the above displacement is inevitable because of continued splitting of farm holdings. It is not really bad if some of the too small holdings give up farming and take some other occupation. It reduces the burden of too many farm households on too small and continuously shrinking farm holdings. It also makes room for using cost-efficient equipment like power tiller, irrigation pump and threshers. These are intermediate technologies and are really essential during the peak season. The project interventions should be careful and make sure that intermediate technologies, rather than highly capital intensive technologies are encouraged.

Over the last three decades technological development in agriculture and rural society has to a great extent reduced women’s drudgery. These include husking mills that totally eliminated manual husking of paddy and some other crops and tube wells eliminating fetching water from long distance. But women’s involvement in threshing, poultry farming, pond aquaculture and homestead gardening has increased tremendously. Now, time has come to improve devices to clean poultry farms more systematically rather than manually only. Improving seed storage integrating indigenous practices with some modern methods can be very helpful. c. GO – NGO and Public – Private Collaboration

Agricultur al technology development and dissemination are no longer limited to public sector agencies. In all areas, such as adaptive research, extension, input distribution and market linkage; a number of NGOs, private companies, foundations and information media have demonstrated considerable capacity building. A few of them such as BRAC, Hortex Foundation, Gono Unnayan Prochesta have been mentioned under section 5. Many others are operational and capable of enhancing their role. One advantage of their larger involvement is making the services demand led, cost-efficient and less dependent on government agencies. This is thus making room for the public sector agencies to concentrate in more fundamental areas where private sector is unlikely to participate.

It was a necessity in the 1970s and 1980 to deliver most services, including distribution of fertilizer and marketing through public sector agencies. Private sector has developed a lot and some NGOs became actively involved and capable. Now, the Government agencies could take larger role in quality assurance such as of seed and market interventions to prevent malpractices.

Medium to large NGOs and private companies can have larger role in extension and value chain while larger NGOs, foundation and large companies can be involved in adaptive research and dissemination of technologies. Mobilizing communities at the grassroots could be delegated to medium to large NGOs in partnership with the CBOs, local government and extension agencies.

6.2 Issues Relevant to Agricultural Research Systems

Agricultural research systems of the country have been described briefly in Chapter 5 along with the relevant constraints. Issues common to research and extension systems have been elaborated in section 6.1. This section discusses issues specific to the research component of the NATP. These could include but not be limited to the following: a. Effective research coordination

BARC is the apex body in the NARS responsible for coordinating agricultural research programs of the ARIs. The ten public sector ARIs belong to four ministries, MOA, MOFL, MOEF and MOC. BARC is said to have limited authority to coordinate. But they lack authority and institutional capacity in terms of scientific and management personnel to oversee the programs of the NARS including the ARIs. Hence, restructuring the BARC and further amending their legal cover, the BARC Act is very important. b. Enhancing allocation of resources to agreed priorities

The agricultural research in Bangladesh suffers from inadequate and unstable funding. The system’s three yearly average share in investment declined from 0.32% of the GDP during 1997/00 to 0.21% of the GDP during 2002/03 which is very low compared to international standard, average 2.8% for developed countries and 0.62% for developing countries. Funding has been unstable due to dependence on externally aided development projects. Funding is particularly unstable and too inadequate for operational expenses and therefore research programs can not be continued once particular projects are closed. Operating funds are rarely available beyond staff salary. c. Need based public private partnership in agricultural research

Bangladesh agriculture is characterized by smallholder subsistence farming that limit possibility of private sector investment in research. Over the last few years, private sector business opportunities expanded in agro processing, seed industry and export of agricultural commodities. Capable private companies and NGOs are coming up and they can effectively participate in adaptive agricultural research. d. Integrate universities as part of agricultural research system

Presently agricultural research is conducted mainly by the ARIs as part of NARS while research activities of the Agricultural Universities are not effectively linked with the NARS. Presently, Bangladesh has three Agricultural Universities (Bangladesh Agricultural University in Mymensingh, Bangabandhu Seikh Mujib Agricultural University in Gazipur and Sher -e-Bangla Agricultural University in Dhaka) and a number of other Universities have agriculture related disciplines like Fisheries and Marine Resources discipline of Khuna University and Marine Science Institute of Chittagong University. A number of new agricultural universities and a veterinary university are coming up. Cooperation of NARS with the agricultural universities will mutually benefit agricultural research and education and will contribute to human resource development for the sector. e. Rationalize network of institutions and substations

The ARIs have a wide network of regional research stations and substations. Many of them are reportedly inadequately staffed, less than optimally equipped and their operating fund is too inadequate to run research programs. It is therefore highly desirable to rationalize the substation network. It would be beneficial to make use of the campus of one ARI substation by another ARI in need rather than establishing new substations unless it is absolutely necessary.

f. Human Resource Development

Human resource development in the NARS is said to be constrained with low salary structure, low scope to further research and training, particularly for the junior scientists and frequent changes in the top positions. Lack of operating fund to carry on research programs on sustainable basis further constrains career building and knowledge upgrading with field conditions. Also, lack of institutional linkage with overseas institutions limits research and funding opportunities. Training programs are often limited to development projects and not developed by comprehensive career planning. Developing comprehensive training plan for the ARIs and NARS taken together is a felt need. g. Information, Education and Communication Campaign

Implementat ion of the project activities requires sharing of information with the relevant stakeholders. In the case of research components, the ARIs and other relevant organizations and individuals must be informed of the desired project interventions, the CGP and SPGR.

6.3 Issues Relevant to Agricultural Extension Systems a. Transparency and accountability of the service delivery systems

Farmers in Bangladesh have limited access to extension services, for so many reasons, and this is true for all sub sectors and all categories of farmers. The poorest categories - the landless, small and marginal farmers and farm women lack access more severely than others. The commercial poultry farmers can somehow afford engaging trained staff, although not adequately qualified and large holders in aquaculture also manage to access limited extension service. But the backyard poultry rearing women and small pond operators are least served and suffer most.

The extension agencies agree that they can not adequately reach the farm ers in the remote villages mainly because of staff shortage and for lack of facilities like transport and traveling allowance. These are of course important constraints. But the main problem is lack of accountability of the public extension services. Offic ially, the field level extension officials are accountable to the line departments through Upazila and district offices. Effectively, field level supervision is inadequate, reporting is limited to paper work and politically motivated staff unionism has further limited staff presence to occasional program days only.

Also, the system lacks transparency. Each DAE field staff (SAAO) is supposed to have a biweekly field program. But the program is not publicly available even at the UP and Upazila levels. So, farmers generally do not know who will be available where and when. It is very simple to display such information on the Upazila and UP notice boards. Further, at least one SAAO is supposed to be regularly available at the Union Parishad complex, but that too is yet to be widely practiced. DOF and DLS offices have no offices below Upazila. Regular presence of SAAO at UP level could also help farmers to access services of these departments, at least through distributing extension materials and providing information when the DOF and DLS staff will be available or where and how farmers can get specific services.

A transparent and accountable farmer led public -private-NGO partnership in extension service is needed to overcome the present problems in the field level. The GOB strategy of a one stop extension service at the UP level deserves high consideration and effective execution. b. Social intermediation/ community mobilization support

Efforts to manage and conserve flood plain fisheries could not be successfully implemented in a community where most participants belong to a minority community and yet in another where most inhabitants are very poor fishers. They needed administrative support and social intermediation for consensus building between communities. The result was, some members contributed to flood plain stocking program while many others remained passive but demanded larger share of the harvest. Some others started stealing and even robbing fish. This was learnt from two of the six villages visited as part of this social assessment. It was however confirmed through discussion with local officials that similar

condition prevails in many areas and the project should therefore highly consider it. This requires cooperation between local administration, local government and community organization. NGOs can assist in the community mobilization process while the involved extension department must take the loading role to initiate and institutionalize it. c. Participation

The NATP comprising resear ch, extension and value chain development involves a wide range of stakeholders - the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries from the grassroots farmer level to national level organizations, development partners, NGOs and media. But the main and ultimate target beneficiaries are “farmers” with emphasis to the poor - landless, small and marginal farmers in all sub-sectors – crops, fisheries and livestock, - both men and women farmers but with a gender focus – to include and specially target women.

To make sure that so diverse primary stakeholders are reached and particularly the weaker groups like the poorest farmers and women are not excluded requires enhancing their participation. But how to ensure or at least encourage their participation remains an importa nt issue.

To be honest, contemporary development projects in Bangladesh, as elsewhere in the developing countries tend to use the concept in view the desires of the development partners, rather than spontaneously. At least, many of the executing bureaucrats see poor people’s participation as a condition to receive donor assistance rather than a genuinely needed development strategy.

Rural Bangladesh had a long tradition of participatory development. In the past local communities built schools and managed them. Government funded only a few schools in the district towns and zamindars funded some in the relatively developed villages. But the communities did the rest all over the country. Also in the agriculture sector, farming communities dug canals, constructed dykes to manage localized water resources. Such self-help initiatives are now lost, over the last fifty years, mainly because of government providing such physical and social infrastructure support, often with donor funding, and administering such development without local participation. The result is lack of community ownership, poor quality of works and more importantly almost total absence of maintenance. Both government and development partners have learnt from this bitter experience and participat ion is now getting focus.

Participation in the development project can be of different levels. The lowest form of people’s participation is opinion taking and then doing everything else by the executing agency. Next level is consultation to make decision, still decision making power remaining with the executing agency. The third level is joint assessment and decision making. The fourth level is collaboration and partnership between the target community and the executive agency where implementation and ownership are shared. A higher level of participation is empowering the community to own, plan, execute and taking over of operation and maintenance. It involves community capacity building while the executing agency retain supportive and facilitating role only. The highest level would be that the community is capable enough to plan, execute and maintain own projects and take assistance of the relevant GOB agencies and other service providers like NGOs on own initiative.

The Fourth Fisheries Project of the GOB, with assistance of IDA helped a process of community capacity building in four coastal shrimp farming polder communities and selected inland fisher groups. Selected local NGOs, Department of Fisheries and Bangladesh Water Development Board helped the communities in this participatory development project. The result has been encouraging in the most difficult shrimp component where communities resolved local conflicts related to leases of canals, selection of sites for water control regulators, super vising construction and ensuring quality control. The community based organizations have been able to legally register, mobilize financial resources and give some benefits to the landless in terms of fishing access to the re-excavated canals. The project may not ensure equity since those with land will reap more benefits from improved shrimp farming, a high value export commodity. But the landless have been allowed to participate and benefit by increased fishing access to canals, larger involvement as farm labor and dyke maintenance labor and trading intermediaries of inputs and outputs. Women groups, in the case of FFP were assisted through another set of NGOs, in selected localities to

acquire skills in various livelihoods while open water fishing and shrimp fry collection were adversely affected, at least temporarily, in view of restrictions on fry catching and temporary fishing ban to ensure sustainable fishing.

The NATP would also take initiative to encourage participation of various stakeholders, par ticularly of the poor and women in various activities that suit locally. This could include family based or smallholder dairy, poultry, aquaculture, horticulture and crop agriculture which benefit the poor and women in particular.

Enhancing participation would require involving committed and capable local NGOs who have already demonstrated competence of working with the poor farmers, fishers, fish farmers, livestock and poultry farmers and women groups. The candidate NGO may be already operating microfinance and various agricultural programs in the same district or Upazila. The partner NGO may be selected on competitive basis. The project will provide a TOR for the partner NGOs.

Although the partner NGO will mobilize community groups for each extension activity located at the village level, the extension departments at the Upazila level will have the official responsibility to mange the programs and report to the project and line agency hierarchies. d. Elite capture

Elite capture of community based organization is a potential risk in all components but more importantly in the extension and value chain. The CIGs to be formed or reorganized may face this problem. Similar problem was found during the execution of the FFP. Local elite (not genuine fisher) tended to grab leadership of fisher groups. It was difficult to avoid them as they in many cases were in control of the water bodies. In rural Bangladesh, there are some people who always move around Upazila complex or district administration. If some projects want to support say small farmers, they become small farmers. If others want to benefit fisher groups, they identify themselves as fisher. If some project wants to organize women, they make wife or sisters in law the executives of women organization. They are everywhere around politicians and administrators. The project management therefore faces many problems.

In many cases they get allocation of khas land or khas water bodies in the name of fake landless. The FFP found instances where rich landlords, their son, relative or even fake persons were listed as landless and allocated khas land but the landlord is actually controlling it.

It is difficult to avoid such elite group because they hold local power. Reaching the genuine landless and poor requires long organizational process than just forming groups or listing beneficiaries. The process requires long consultation and working in the communities, with the communities and by the communities. The facilitating NGO must physically stay in the community and not outside of the community say in the Upazila or district town. This will help them continuously observe and find truths. Fake names will eventually go and genuine ones will be coming up, gradually, the poor, poorer and poorest ones.

There will be some initial problems, the elite and their allies and the touts will try to influence and ultimately they will give up. It also happens that some of the elite change their attitude and start helping the project when they realize that, after all the project wants to benefit the poor in their locality and for the over all development of the area. If they also realize that the project attention can not be diverted and resources can not be grabbed, they will find it better to help development of own people rather than proving themselves anti-people. Some of them then become “champions” to help pro-poor development rather than obstructing it. The FFP, at a later stage found it comfortable to convert the elite to champions. After all, in rural society, many elite are ready to prove them as good social workers and without interest. They of course have one interest that “people honor them”, give salam and they appreciate it more than material benefits.

Elite capture is difficult to avoid but it is not impossible. Doing it requires awareness of the problems, the local contexts - identify the elite, the touts, their stakes and linkages - and then act proactively.

Experienced NGOs, long partnership with communities, organizing the communities, helping their capacity building, ensuring wide participation of the local stakeholders including the poor in the CBOs are essential from both NGO side and the executing agencies. e. Institutional Sustainability

In chapter 5, Historical Context, experience of the ten IDA funded projects in the agriculture sector revealed considerable success in building physical infrastructure and the introducing a variety of extension approaches. A good number of research and training institutes were built, officials and trainers were trained, and the targets at the output and outcome levels were largely achieved. But problems remained in sustainability. Once the project closed, continuity suffered as funds under recurrent budget were difficult to be approved. Limited funds allocated under the recurrent budget were mainly spent to pay salary, leaving nearly none to carry on the activities. Things are likely to improve in the near future and the NATP will help in this regard.

The above applies to GOB agencies. The same also applies to the NGOs. Most of the small to medium and local NGOs lack sustainable funding source. They depend on donor supported projects and sub- projects contracted under various national projects. Once such contracts expire, the NGOs cease to carry on the activities and the target groups are frustrated.

In the case of GOB project, continuing assistance through revenue budget is a possibility. In the case of NGOs, program linkage, rather than contracting of piecemeal activities can be considered. Stable NGOs in the locality with similar programs institutionalized in their own system can be taken as partners and not just sub-project contractors. It was observed in greater Mymensingh and Barisal that, some NGOs already with similar programs in the area are perceived to continue support. In contrast, a few others coming as contract partner are likely to leave soon once the project support expires.

In the case of FFP, one regionally established NGO is continuing their support to one of the contracted shrimp polders while others are leaving once the project closes in June 2006.

In the case of community organization, GOB support to build up capacity of the community organization is a viable option. In the FFP shrimp polders the CBOs have been able to gain legal recognition, mobilize financial resources and elect responsible leaders. They have started transparent recruitment of members and election of leaders. They are likely to continue beyond project life. But the local DOF and BWDB agreed to continue partnership with them. They have also established linkage with local Union Parishad and local Upazila administration. This is a good experience, although it is too early to comment, how long they will sustain. Of course, they will not die soon, and keeping them alive and further nurturing remains the responsibility of the relevant GOB extension department, the DOF in this case in cooperation with the BWDB. It can be expected that, the DAE, DOF and DLS will help organizing similar CBOs under the NATP.

Trainee Allowance

This is a sustainability issue. It was observed in both SAIP and IDA funded smallholder agriculture projects, respectively in Mymensingh and Barisal region that, farmer training was dependent on the payment of daily allowance to trainees. Local DAE staff argued that, without trainee allowance the trainees are disinterested to give up a days work to attend training class. The farmer also had a motive to earn trainee allowance rather than learn and apply the learning in the field. A local NGO based in the southern Madaripur district however did not pay trainee allowance under their agricultural training programs. This has been possible through a consultation process with the farmer groups to select trainees, training subject, timing and venue. They hold trainin g in the villages rather than in the district and Upazila towns, elimination traveling cost and traveling time for the farmers. The freedom given to farmers to select trainees, training venue, subject and time ensure selection of specific farmers who are really interested in specific training and not in trainee allowance.

The problem typical of GOB project is that training funds are released about the end of the year and field offices are instructed to hold specific training that may or may not match local priorities at that time. Field staff must execute it in haste without any scope to select trainees through consultation at the grassroots. Then they have an easy option to offer trainee allowance to invite trainees coming to the district or Upazila. The trainee list has to be prepared by deskwork. So, training becomes supply-driven, rather than demand-driven.

It was observed in the case of shrimp farming before FFP, that while Upazila Fishery offices were reporting farmers’ disinterest to receive training, as the shrimp farmers are very busy people, the farmers in the villages were reporting lack of training as a constraint to increase production. The problem was the gap between farmers and the extension system, the DOF not delivering training at the field level what the farmer needed most. They desired presence of technically skilled people to visit the farms, identify problems and teach, rather show the farmers, what they should do, and how. So, there is evidence that, farmers do not want trainee allowance. What they need is bringing training to them, to meet their needs in the field and in consultation with them.

Free inputs for demonstration

A visit to a demo plot of groundnut cultivation by a farmer who is beneficiary of both an IPM program and technology demonstration of the DAE in Bakerganj Upazila in southern Barisal district received ground nut seed to demonstrate viability of the crop. The farmer received training, technology and fertilizer along with seed. Local DAE staff visited the plot more or less regularly, advised him on farming practices and the harvest was good despite receiving seed a month later than desired sowing time. When asked whether other farmers expressed interest to start groundnut cultivation in the area seeing his plot, he was silent and indicated his doubt of expanding the crop. A DAE staff also remarked that, not to speak of other farmer, the present demonstration farmer will produce groundnut if free seeds and free fertilizer are supplied, along with training. The staff meant that, free inputs for demonstration along with daily allowances paid for training contributed to receiving mentality.

In the case of local NGO, GUP in Madaripur, farmers were given option to buy inputs at cost (no subsidy). Price fixed by the BADC was charged. Farmers’ benefit was ensured quality and timely availability of seeds rather than free supply. This helped farmers more than delivering free inputs. f. Intra and Inter agency cooperation

The stakeholder analysis provided under section 3 indicated involvement of a variety of secondary and tertiary stakeholders, who are institutions at various levels and have a variety of competing and even conflicting interests that can affect project from the very designing stage through execution to future institutionalization. The NATP requires the following consultation and consensus building process to resolve such intra and inter agency concerns.

i. Agreeing between development partners on specific project objectives, implementation modalities, sub sector and agency wise allocation of resources and clearly defining roles of each agency ii. Defining roles of private sector, NGOs and CBOs concerning project activities iii. Defining roles of national, district and local administration and local government (Upazila and Union Parishad) concerning project activities iv. Segregating activities and allocations targeted to special groups such as SM farmer, landless and women v. Ensuring transparent planning and execution of various project activities and involving media representatives, business association, civil society and even staff union executives in stakeholder consultations at various levels, and vi. Decentralized decision making as well as inter institutional linkages, in particular between Union Parishad and Upazila.

7. Project Design Elements for addressing the Issues of Significance

7.1 General Issues

Inclusion and inequality: One of the side effects of technology development is the wealthier groups taking advantage and marginalization of the poorer groups because they lack access to land and other resources. Bangladesh however has some favorable conditions to benefit the poor. These include reduced domination of the landed aristocracy and marginal to small and medium farmers managing most part of the farm area (82% farm area under the ownership of small, marginal and medium farmers). Although 53% households are functionally landless who own 0 to 0.2 ha cultivable land, only about 0.21% are homeless. This means that 99.79% rural households own at least a small piece of homestead land. Homestead land in rural Bangladesh is very productive. Even if the size is only about 100 sq meters, people produce considerable amounts of fruits, vegetables, bamboo, timber and fuel wood around the house. In addition, most of the rural households rear poultry, duck, goat, cattle and many operate small homestead ponds. All of these contribute to household income, nutrition and food security by direct income earning or at least by expenditure saving.

Giving larger attention to fru its and vegetables, horticulture nurseries, cattle, poultry and aquaculture will help benefiting the landless, poor and women. Conservation of fisheries resources will help fishing communities.

GO – NGO, Public – Private collaboration: The project will encourage GO – NGO, and public private collaboration in all components. In the research component, CGP will be open to all types of institutions, the ARIs, the NGOs, and the private sector. The extension component will involve local NGOs to mobilize local communities, facilitating them organizing in CIGs and federating the CIGs at the UP and Upazila levels. The NGOs, in partnership with Upazila level extension departments and local government at the UP level. In the value chain component, NGOs and private sector will be encouraged to help the CIGs and POs with training, receiving quality inputs and marketing of outputs by contract farming arrangement. The NGOs may also provide microfinance service under their normal program to the farmers and farm women provided the CIG/PO demands such service.

7.2 Research Component

The main issues identified related to the research component include (a) effective coordination of research under the NARS, (b) enhanced funding and utilizing the fund according to agreed priorities, (c) encourage and redirect research to make it need based through public private partnership, (d) enhanced partnership between agricultural research and agricultural education in the public sector agricultural un iversities, (e) restructuring the ARIs and rationalizing the network of ARI substations and enhancing inter -ARI cooperation in the use of each other’s substation and other facilities, (f) human resource development, and (g) information, education and communication campaign.

The NATP research component aims at enhancing enhanced efficiency and effectiveness of the NARS through:

· Institutional reform by revising the Acts of BARC and ARIs - this will address issue (a) · Formulating uniform service structure and rules of business for NARS- this will address issue (f) · Developing a sustainable funding mechanism for agricultural research-this will address issue (b) · Rationalizing organizational structure – this will address issue (e) · Improving research and resource management – this integrates issues (c), (d), and (g).

Institutional Reforms: Institutional reforms for agricultural research will address the outstanding issues of (i) formulating one Act for BARC and ARIs to ensure effective planning and coordination of national agricultural research and resource allocation; (ii) creating a non-cadre “Agricultural Research Service” with uniform service structure and rules of business for recruitment, promotion, inter - institutional staff transfer, career advancement, incentive structure, professional training to attract and retain a cadre of high quality scientists; and (iii) establishing a Krishi Gabeshana Foundation to manage an Endowment Fund and administer a Competitive Grants Program for short to medium term high priority problem solving research.

Sustainable Funding Mechanism: Establishment of an Endowment Fund has been proposed as a strategy to generate steady stream of income, in addition to normal Government funding, to finance time- boun d high priority short and medium-term research projects on emerging problems through a Competitive Grants Program (CGP) which will be open to all public and private actors involved in agricultural research. The project would also support priority long term sponsored public goods research by ARIs, which will be coordinated by BARC. A Krishi Gabeshana Foundation will be established to finance and administer the Competitive Grants Program.

Improving System Management: The project will address the issues related to research system organization and research management that would improve the efficiency and effectiveness of BARC and ARIs. This will cover (a) rationalization of mandate and organizational structure, including research facilities; (b) demand-driven participatory research planning and priority setting; (c) monitoring and evaluation and impact assessment; (d) human resource development (recruitment, skill gaps, training, incentive structure and performance assessment); (e) building partnerships with the private sector and NGOs (pluralistic institutional arrangement); (f) development of technologies to increase productivity and diversification of production systems and post-harvest value addition; and (g) bridging the yield gaps between experimental stat ions and farmers’ fields. The project will also support review and streamlining of policies, structure, functions and business procedures of different line departments (DAE, DLS and DOF).

Improving Governance: The project would facilitate formulation of an Act for BARC and ARIs, develop uniform service structure and rules of business, and support implementation of the provisions of the Act and the uniform service rules for enhancing accountability and transparency in managing the research system. Support will also be provided for improving procurement of goods and services, financial management and administrative procedures of BARC and ARIs, and for improving and facilitating increased use of information and communication technology (ICT).

7.4 Extension Component

The main issues identified related to the extension component include (a) transparency and accountability of the service delivery systems, (b) social intermediation and community mobilization support, (c) participation, particularly of the weaker groups, (d) elite capture of community organizations and benefits there of, (e) institutional sustainability, and (f) intra and inter agency cooperation.

The NATP extension component aims at establishing a decentralized extension service at the Upazila level for developing pluralistic extension system. Specific objectives would be to:

· Promote demand-led bottom-up extension program planning; - this addresses issues (a) to (d) · Devolve program and fund management responsibilities to Upazila-this addresses issue (a) & (e)

· Promote formation of farmers’ Common Interest Groups and Producer Organizations to ensure farmers’ participation in planning and funding of extension programs-addresses issues (a) to (d). · Strengthen research-extension-farmer linkages; - this addresses issue (f) · Build human and institutional capacity, including improved coordination among line departments as well as between research and extension. – This addresses issues (e) and (f).

For the extension component, the project proposes to fully decentralize extension services of crops, livestock and fisheries sub-sectors at the Upazila level and devolve extension program management and funding responsibilities also to the respective Upazila officers who would work in team and in cooperation with each other. With this aim, an Upazila Extension Coordination Committee (UECC) will be established to plan, execute, monitor and evaluate all types of agricultural extension activities. This will include preparation of Upazila extension plan for crops, livestock and fisheries by aggregating the Union Micro Plans. The Union Micro Pans will be prepared by village level common interest groups (CIGs) compiled at the UP level with the assistance of Union Extension Facilitation Team (UEFT).

So, this will be three-tier planning and development process of the grassroots agricultural extension activities. The lowest tier is the village level CIGs who are groups of around 25 farmers or farm women, homogenous in nature by gender, ethnicity and economic status. One village may have 5 to 10 homogenous groups formed with the facilitation of partner NGOs. Each group will make an extension plan for one year, segregated to crop seasons. The CIGs will plan what they will produce during particular season and year showing crop wise area, likely input requirement, source of inputs, financing of input cost. It will indicate support needed from the project and other service providers such as training, demonstration, credit, market linkage etc. The plans of the CIGs will be combined at the UP level.

In each UP, extension facilitation team (UEFT) would comprise SAAO of DAE and village level extension agent/vaccinator/LEAF/FA of the DLS and DOF. The UEFT will also include field staff of partner NGO. Local UP chairman will be the head of the UEFT to ensure ownership of the local communities under the umbrella of elected local government, the Union Parishad. SAAO will act as the member secretary while the UP based NGO staff will act as coordinator.

The UEFT will have an office at the UP complex or UP office. The UP chair will ensure office accommodation. This will function as one stop advice and information centre which will remain open all working days during office hours. At least one SAAO will be present on rotational basis to make sure that farmer can access information and services and the office is never unattended. The extension services would reach the farmers with special emphasis to smallholder farmers and women.

Support to decentralized extension service will focus: (a) ensuring bottom up extension program planning through participation of producer Common Interest Groups (CIGs) and Producer Organizations (POs), and NGOs; (b) inter-agency cooperation and coordination in planning, execution and monitoring and evaluation of Upazila extension programs; (c) strengthening research-extension-farmer linkages to ensure two way flow of information; and (d) establishment of Farmers’ Information and Advice Centre.

Considering the problems of delays in fund release and finalization of the approval process, the project will advance fund to the extent of 50% of the yearly approved budget to the UECC segregated to three sub sectors and the officer in charge of the sub sector will draw the advance, execute sub sector level activities and report half yearly on the execution of the programs and adjust earlier advances before release of the next advance.

execute the program with over all guidance of the sub sector level drawing and disbursing officer. The UECC will oversee the whole process approve the micro plan and budget at the Upazila level.

Reporting and correspondence with the line agencies is the responsibility of the Upazila heads (UAO, ULO, UFO/SUFO) of the respective sub sectors.

Table - 21 provides at a glance the major institutional constraints of the extension systems and remedial measures to be considered during project execution.

Table – 21: Institutional Constraints and Suggested Remedial Measures

Issues Constraints Remedial Measures 1. Transparency Target group – farmers, fisher, farm 1. Decentralized and pluralistic extension women, CIGs not informed of the service with one stop advice center at the UP project activities, available services. level, open all week days 9 am to 5 pm. 2. Accountability 1. Poor interaction with CIGs, PO 2. Extension agency staff reluctant 2. Staff orientation, training by project and to plan and execute programs in line departments. partnership with CIG, PO, LGB and NGOs. They consider themselves 3. Direction from respective line owners of everything. departments. 3. Inter-agency cooperation Conflict, rivalry, planning and 1. Prior consultation and consensus building. execution delays 2. Targets, tasks and resources segregated by sub sector. 4. Institutional networking 1. Weak research – extension - Line agencies initiates and carry on dialogue farmer linkage. with other GOB agencies, international 2. Weak linkage with other service organizations, NGOs and private sector. providers- NGOs and private sector 5. Staff unionism 1. Line of command weakened 1. Strong political commitment 2. Staff absence remain high 2. Strong direction from line ministries 6. Inadequate and unstable 1. Dependence on donor funding 1. GOB funding through revenue budget funding 2. Inadequate operating fund 2. Advance operating fund 3. Funding through Upazila block grant.

8. Social Safeguards

8.1 Introducing Social Safeguards

The NATP is basically a growth promoting project aimed at strengthening the national agricultural technology system, increasing productivity and enhancing market opportunities through support to agricultural research, extension and value chain in all sub sectors, field crops, horticulture crops, fisheries and livestock. Supporting agricultural growth is a poverty reduction strategy of the Government as well as of the development partners since growth in agriculture helps poverty reduction.

The NATP project components and activities are unlikely to adversely affect any disadvantaged group through research in harmful technologies or crops. The project design is such that the research priorities will be determined at the NARS through effective consultations with the relevant stakeholders to ensure that the researches are “need based”. Still, there remains some concern as the likely outcome of the research interventions can not be clearly predicted before the research is actually undertaken.

The extension activities also will be very participatory in nature, to be planned at the village level and consolidated at the Upazila level where the common interest groups of farmers and local government will be actively involved. Therefore it can be expected that the projects’ extension activities are pro-poor and they adequately take in to account of the interests of the weaker groups like the landless, poor and women. However, there remains some concern like elite capture.

It is therefore important that the NATP makes some special arrangements to avoid unpredictable adverse consequences or uncertain outcomes. To overcome such possibilities, a simple safeguard management framework has been proposed in this chapter to be applied to the research component followed by a safeguard management plan to be applied mainly to the extension component.

A comprehensive view of the social safeguard management elements is provided in Figure 1. It comprises legislative as well as non legislative institutional elements. The legislative elements include constitutional provisions and relevant national laws, policies and guidelines. The non legislative elements include awareness, mitigating measures, M&E and the relevant institutions.

Figure – 1: Social Safeguard Management Elements

8.2 Legislative Framework a. Constitutional provisions:

The constitution of the people’s republic of Bangladesh pledges

A society, “ free from exploitation in which the rule of law, fundamental human rights, freedom, equality and justice - political, economic and social, will be secured for all citizens”. – The preamble page.

“The state shall encourage local Government institutions composed of representatives of the areas concerned in such institutions special representation shall be given, as far as possible, to peasants, workers and women”. – Article 9

“Ensure participation of women in all spheres of national life.” – Article 10.

Ensure “effective participation by the people through their elected representatives in administration at all levels” – Article 11.

“Emancipate the toiling masses – the peasants and workers – and backward sections of the people from all forms of exploitation”. – Article 14.

Ensure “ basic necessities of life – food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare; and agriculture and rural development and comp ulsory and free education for children”. – Articles 15 to 17.

Ensure “ equality before law” - Article 27.

Ensure “ freedom of association as fundamental rights” - Article 38.

All of the above constitutional provisions are important since they pledge not only equality, but also special safeguards for the weaker section of the society.

b. The relevant social safeguard policies, Acts, Rules and Strategies:

The Government of Bangladesh has several important policies pertaining to development of agricult ure – crops agriculture, fisheries and livestock and the policies incorporate social safeguards in relation to the development of agriculture, besides economic growth strategies. Such policies include:

1. National Agriculture Policy, 1999 2. New Agricultural Extension Policy, 1996 3. Implementation Strategy of National Agriculture Extension Policy, 1997 4. Actionable Policy Brief and Resource Implications, 2004 5. National Fisheries Policy, 1998 6. National Fisheries Strategy, 2006 (yet be approved along with 8 sub strategies) 7. National Environment Policy, 1992 8. Environment Conservation Act, 1995 9. Environment Conservation Rules, 1997 10. National Women Development Policy, 1997 revised in 2004 11. Prevention of Women and Children Repression Act, 2000, revised in 2003 12. National Water Policy, 1999 13. Guidelines on Participatory Water Management, 2000 14. National Land Use Policy, 2001 15. National Rural Development Policy, 2001 16. National Forestry Policy, 1994 17. National Food and Nutrition Policy, 1997 18. Comprehensive Food Security Policy (Draft), 2000

The above GOB policies in general emphasize equity and give special attention to the disadvantaged groups. Some of the most relevant policies emphasize the following:

The National Agriculture Policy, 1999: highlights as one of its 18 main objectives as under:

To protect interests of the small, marginal and tenant farmers

Woman was not specially mentioned in the objective part but a section was included at the end recognizing women’s role in particular to agricultural activities like post-harvest work and kitchen gardening and pledged training them in such areas and providing credit and extension support.

Under research section of the NAP, one of the 20 priority areas emphasized “enhanced participation of women in agricultural activities and removal of constraints”.

The National Fisheries Policy 1998: specifies its second objective as:

Poverty alleviation--and improving socio economic condition of the fishers

Women not specially mentioned in the objective part but in the aquaculture part it did mention that women in fish culture will be trained – did not mention it as a priority.

The main thrust of the Food Policy, 1988 are :

Price stability Vulnerable Group Development – targeted to the poor and distressed women Vulnerable Group Feeding - targeted to the poor and distressed women

The National Food and Nutrition policy, 1997: widens the scope of food policy and pledges

Food security down to household level Goes beyond cereals, emphasizes homestead agriculture, fruits, vegetables, fish, meat Emphasizes organic agriculture and social equity

National Women Development Policy, 1997 revised in 2004: is very comprehensive. It comprises 20 objectives and 14 areas of actions. Each area of actions contains sub areas and several identified actions in each. Mentioning all is unnecessary. A few of the important objectives include:

· Equality between men and women · Security of women from family to state level · Economic, social and political empowerment of women · Human rights · Poverty alleviation of women · Prevent oppression against women and girls · Equal access to education, sports, culture etc. · Special assistance to distressed women like poor widows, divorced, separated, abandoned, single women · Institutional development

The most relevant women policy to the NATP is:

Innovate and use of technology that is women -friendly and reject of technologies if not women- friendly

c . The policies versus policy implementation

Bangladesh has Too many policies and too little implementation Also too many laws and too little law enforcement

Let us take the example of dowry in wedding – Dowry is illegal but almost universally practiced. To some, it is a gift. To others it is a condition to marriage. Yet, to many others, it is a necessary condition to continue “peaceful” married life even after the birth of children. No amount of legal action will ever be able to stop it. d. Awareness

Laws are necessary but not sufficient to achieve desired objectives. The sufficient condition is social awareness and self motivation. No law or policy compel a landowner to plant trees surrounding homestead land and fish ponds, although government encourages tree plantation by other means – publicity, awareness building. The result is revolutionary success. Humans are guided by ow n benefits, high price of timber and fruits and not just global interest, pure oxygen. Here, global interest and personal interest converged. But in the case of public forest, personal interests of thief and corrupt forestry employee converged to defeat national interest and global interest. The toughest law to imprison any intruder has failed to protect the so called reserved public forests.

Another good example is health and family planning. CPR exceeded 60% and EPI cover is above 90%. Awareness building and improved access to services with efforts from both GOB and NGOs made it possible.

The last example is sanitation. Many Upazilas and Unions achieved 100% sanitation and national sanitation cover improved to 70% from only about 26% in the early 1990s . The participation of local government, Union Parishad deserves highest appreciation in it along with local administration and NGOs. Here again, awareness campaign, rather than ring-slabs was the driving force.

8.3 NATP Social Safeguard Management Framework – Research Component

NATP agricultural research is a reasonably safe area of investment from the social point of view, because the project will support need based and mainly adaptive research within a broader framework of helping poverty reduction, equity and sustain ability. Research in the NARS in general and the NATP in particular can not overlook the interests and priorities of the poor and disadvantaged groups since priorities are set before specific research activities are carried out. The NATP will assist to strengthen the role of NARS, hence researches are likely to be more need based and poverty focused than before.

The Actionable Policy Brief and Resource Implications, a document prepared under the Agricultural Sector Review of the MOA identified six short and medium term priorities. The short tem priorities concern directing research attention to land and water -saving technologies, bio-diversity conservation, product development and quality improvements. The research section of the National Agriculture Policy identified 20 priority areas for the ARIs and one of these concerns involve enhancing women’s participation in agricultural activities.

The NATP social safeguard management framework would comprise a set of exclusion criteria and a screening process to ensure directing research to priority areas in all probable sub projects. The exclusion criteria and the screening process are provided in sections 8.3.1 and 8.3.2 respectively.

8.3.1 Exclusion criteria

proposals under CGP having risks of developing socially or environmentally harmful technologies are right way rejected. An indicative list of exclusion criteria is provided below:

· GMO, biotechnology: The medium term prior ities in the Actionable Policy Brief of the MOA highlighted the need for formulating a comprehensive biotechnology policy and regulatory framework and capacity building for GMO testing. Without having such comprehensive policy and institutional capacity to researches in such areas could be risky and the Actionable Policy Brief cautioned of its social sensitivity. The NATP therefore will not support such research proposals under CGP. · Nuclear agriculture: Nuclear agriculture could be another risky area and the NATP will not accept research proposals in this area under CGP. · Physical obstruction and closing water flows: The NATP will not accept any research proposals under CGP that may cause physical obstruction to water flows and thus adversely affecting aquatic biodiversity in haor areas, rivers, canals and beels and thus negatively impacting livelihoods of fishers. In contrast, interventions helping conservation of open water fisheries resources such as community managed sanctuaries and livelihoods support to traditional fishers will be appreciated. · Grabbing common property area: NATP will not support interventions that will contribute to diverting common property, such as grazing areas to intensive agriculture and flowing water bodies, khas jolmohal (public fisheries) and flood plains to intensive closed aquaculture. · Deforestation: The NATP will not support any interventions that will contribute to deforestation or reducing biodiversity in the public forest areas. · Indigenous people: NATP will not support any sub-project which is likely to affect livelihoods and cultural identity of indigenous people. · Requiring land acquisition leading to involuntary resettlement: NATP is unlikely to involve land acquisition and thus involve involuntary resettlement. Any subproject proposal requiring land acquisition will generally be excluded. Particularly those requiring land acquisition without affected people’s informed consent or power of choice as outlined in the World Bank’s Operational Policy (OP 4.12). The OP 4.12 covers involuntary acquisition of land involving (a) relocation or loss of shelter, loss of assets or access to assets, and loss of income sources or means of livelihoods. The OP 4.12 requires compensating the affected people at full replacement cost and as per resettlement plan or resettlement policy framework that must be prepared by the project. NATP wants to avoid such complexities and therefore land acquisition must be avoided in the sub projects.

8.3.2 Screening process

While the exclusion criteria will help accepting particular sub project for consideration or outright rejection, the screening process will evaluate merits of the proposals based on a set of subjective criteria. By each criterion a proposal will be assigned positive and negative scores in the assessment of the evaluator. Over all score (sum of positive minus sum of negative) will help the management to rank a sub project high or low. Scores below 10, 10 to 14 and 15+ could be considered low, moderate and high.

The criteria provided in the matrix are however very indicative and the evaluators and management shall have freedom to modify the list if felt essential.

Table 22: Indicative Screening Matrix in Social Safeguard Management

Criteria Key Question Positive Score Negative Score Reasons for (1-3) (-1-3) specific scores assigned 1. Participation To what extent ultimate beneficiary of the sub project will enable the poor, landless and women to participate and benefit. 2 Inclusiveness To what extent the proposed intervention or its outcome and Equity will contribute to equitable distribution of benefits generated by it 3 Affordability To what extent small, marginal farmers, women will be able to afford the benefits of the proposed technology or it will require investment beyond their financial capacity 4. Ecological To what extent ecological reserves like forestry, open reserves and water fisheries conservation (beel/ haor/ baor/ river/ canal/ livelihoods of the flood plains) and thus livelihoods of the poor like fishers poor will be impacted. 5 Soundness of To what extent the proposed technology development technology match national priorities set in NAP, NARS etc. 6 Cultural To what extent the application of proposed technology will Identity positively or negatively affect cultural identity of indigenous people 7 Displacement of To what extent the sub project will help or constrain marginal groups ownership/tenancy/ customary rights of landless, small, from land/ land marginal farmers, fishers, women, adibasi, charlander etc. use such as on grazing, fishing, share-cropping, smallholder farming 8 Adaptability Likelihood of successful research -extension – farmer linkage and feedback TOTAL SCORE

The above checklist of issues is indicative only. The relevant institutes will be able to adjust it to their needs.

8.4 NATP Social Safeguard Management Plan - Extension Component

Safeguard management framework will be applied in the research component since the outcomes are not immediately visible and could be uncertain. The outcomes of the extension component on the other hand are tangible and immediate. Also, the effects and impact are direct and the affected and benefited people can be easily identified and targeted. Therefore a more specific safeguard management plan will be applied in the case of extension component.

8.4.1 Probable Effects an d Mitigating Measures

The safeguard management plan will involve identifying probable effects and necessary measures in order to aware and guide the executing agencies to take precautionary measures and corrective actions, should some interventions need them.

Table – 23: Probable Effects and Mitigating Measures Problems and Issues Effects Mitigating Measures

Delivery failure: not properly reaching target group 1. Elite capture of CIG. PO Weaker groups not adequately 1. Continuous field based community represented in the CIGs and POs and consultation though NGOs but in are deprived of project benefits. partnership with local government and 2. Sustainability of CBOs CIGs, PO, CBOs institutionally extension agencies. weak, unsustainable and become non-functional after project period. 2. Build up responsible and representative 3. Priority setting Priority areas of the poor and CBOs and help their capacity building, women such as homestead networking and institutionalization. agriculture, backyard poultry, promoting seed preservation 3. Targeting: Homogeneous CIGs at the methods and open water fisheries grassroots and targets segregated. management may not be prioritized while commercial aquaculture and 4. Participatory planning at the CIG level. field crops may get priority on the ground of economy of scale and stronger voice of the non-poor. 4. Participation and Weaker groups’ right to participate ownership may be either denied or they allowed only token participation and that too reluctantly in view of “condition imposed by donors”. Structural failure 5. Labor displacement Will require better skilled manpower Farmer training in new crops, better farming and may reduce employment practices, operation and maintenance of opportunities of unskilled labor- simple equipment etc in partnership with power tiller in place of bullock CIG. plough. 6. Tenant displacement Land owners will manage land NGOs may help tenant farmers through rather than sharecropping because of microfinance support if necessary. The increased profitability. Rent will selected partner NGOs should have ongoing increase and poor farmers will, at MFI program in the area. least initially unable to pay higher Displaced sharecroppers be trained and rent. provided MFI support. 7. Marginalization of small New crops, improved farming 1. Skill training and marginal farmers and practices will require increasing 2. MFI, credit linkage women investment and the small/marginal 3. Market linkage farmer may lack financial capital, 4. Contract farming support equipment and skills.

8.4.2 Targeting Special Groups: Women, Landless, Adibasi and Charlanders

The development services reach inadequately to the farming communities in general and to the weaker segments of the rural communities in particular, such as women and landless. Often stated problems are inadequacy of staff and lack of transport facilities. But the real problem is lack of accountability of the system in public sector services delivery institutions . Of course, lack of operating expenses is a constraint. The extension services remain largely inactive in the absence of development projects, because required recurrent funding such as for training, demonstration etc. can not be easily obtained without project. For the same reasons, landless and women are inadequately served in the absence of projects. They are served under projects like SAIP because, targets are set in the project and compliance is monitored on a regular basis during the project period.

Working with women group is better through female staff at the local level particularly in more conservative areas like Chittagong, Noakhali and Sylhet districts. Conservativeness is decreasing but its elimination will take time. Until then female NGO staff could be utilized to specially reach women groups. Female SAAO may not be practicable at this stage because new recruitment in large number is unlikely but existing female SAAW can be placed in the project area as far as practicable.

Women have special activities and potentials in agriculture, such as backyard poultry, poultry farm, dairy, cattle fattening, duck rearing, homestead pond, home based horticulture, seed preservation, post- harvest care, processing and storage. Training and extension service to women deserve careful designing considering special needs.

The disadvantaged social groups require special targeting under various development programs since they are often missed by the normal programs, particularly of the Government Departments mainly because of limited institutional capacity. Agricultural technology traditionally attracts wealthier farmers and at most enterprising medium farmers. It is unlikely to attract the landless and poor even in areas with reasonably developed physical infrastructure, like road network. The charlanders, women and adibasis having physical, social and cultural barriers remain isolated from the institutions and are likely to be least served by the development programs, unless specially targeted.

This section highlights some of the major concerns of women, charlanders and adibasis based on a brief literature review supplemented with fieldwork conducted under this study.

Women

Chapter 2 gave an overview of the status of women in Bangladesh and their role in the agriculture sec tor. It was noted that women’s role in rice and other crop production, particularly in post-harvest and seed preservation remains sizeable and their involvement in fisheries and livestock is expanding. In the past women’s involvement in these sub sectors was limited to very subsistence level and home-based activities like backyard poultry. Now it has expanded to commercial poultry and aquaculture, beyond homestead ponds.

Given these, the project recognizes that the women participation is crucial to the success of the project. Besides understanding their roles, needs and perception;, women-centric constraints that limit their participation in the project designing, implementation and management too should be appreciated. Further, it is well perceived that addressing gender issues will result in benefits that go beyond the spheres of the project, into household livelihood improvements in particular and household food and nutritional security, in general.

In view of above, the project’s Gender Inclusive Strategy will aim at recognizing women from the farming households’ point of view and as farmers/ farm managers, in their own right. Accordingly, the following interventions will be planned:

· Capacity Building: (i) This will include training the researchers to identify and respond to women’s technology requirement; (ii) gender sensitive training for all project functionaries at the national, district and Upazila levels, including contractual partners; (iii) equipping the NGOs in conducting gender analysis and identifying opportunities for interventions; and (iv) developing a cadre of women agriculture workers (like LEAF of DOF) from among the local farming communities/ self -help groups/ NGOs. · Women Mobilization: Special efforts at establishing exclusive women groups and provide opportunity for participation in demonstrations, shouldering responsibility for input supplies, quality control and output marketing. · Technology Support: particularly to the women groups in agriculture technology adoption (both pre- as well as post-harvest) and providing marketing support and facilitating linkages with other agencies/ institutions. · Governance: Women membership/ representation in local bodies/ CBOs shouldering responsibility for designing, approval as well as implementation of research proposals as well as village/ Union/ Upazila Action Plans.

b. Adibasi

The adibasi communities are reached by the extension services under special projects, rather than under general programs. It is therefore worthwhile to specially target adibasi groups. They need support as in horticulture because the forest areas have deteriorated for excessive exploitation, and environmentally unsound plantation has considerably damaged the ecosystem.

In Jhinaigati, Sherpur district of Mymensingh region, an adibasi community informed that, the indigenous trees like saal and gazari grew automatically after cutting but new species require continuous plantation. More importantly, seasonal short duration crops like ginger, turmeric and simul alu were cultivated under saal trees without affecting long term productivity of the forest. Now, plantation of ekashia, sishu, akashmoni, ucaliptus etc, has substantially reduced the availability of wild fruits, herbs, and cultivation of seasonal crops under the trees. Therefore horticulture has become essential to the adibasi communities for their survival in the area.

Although, hunting is still in practice, as part of culture, animal availability has gone down because of too heavy human interventions. The adibasi communities now therefore need cattle and poultry rearing.

Adibasi groups are targeted quite intensively by the NGOs, like CARITAS, World Vision and their partners. However, special assistance to the adibasi groups relating to agricultural development deserves involving the extension department for the sake of sustainability at one hand and for enhancing interaction of the GOB extension department with the indigenous people.

The project is cautious of making any harm to the indigenous peoples, particularly to their cultural identities, customary rights on the land, the natural resources like forests, reservoirs of water and water flows. The project will discourage research projects to be affect areas where indigenous people live in large numbers, the Upazilas with 10% or more indigenous population. The project has excluded Chittagong Hill Tract districts where indigenous people are majority or close to 50 percent. This eliminates the chance of including any Upazila with larger than 5 to 10 percent indigenous people since no other district has so high concentration of indigenous people. The project may however include extension services to a selected adibasi communities in Upazilas included under the extension component provided further that, competent NGOs undertake community consultation and the concerned adibasi communities desire such service rather than the executing supply-driven activities. c. Charlanders

The char areas, particularly those surrounded by various channels of the Brahmaputra Jamuna are specially deprived of GOB extension services. Brahmaputra Jamuna char areas have very low coverage of even NGO service. The main reasons are isolation from the highway network. The char areas also lack power supply. The NGOs consider them uneconomic and risky to deliver services. The GOB extension workers can not or do not reach there because their normal transport allowance is too inadequate.

Presently, DFIDB has initiated a Char Livelihoods project targeting the Brahmaputra Jamuna char area. But they alone will not be able to serve the whole area and particularly all of the target households, mainly because more than 80% of the carlanders are poor. DFIDB may reach only about one half of the target households.

Further, the char livelihood project is wider in scope than agriculture, fisheries and livestock. Therefore these three sub sectors may not get enough attention. It is therefore very important to cover charlanders as a special target group.

The NATP will however not take any activity that can adversely affect the livelihoods of charlanders. Any activity involving conversion of common property resources like grazing area, community and public ponds to intensive agriculture and aquaculture will be discouraged in all Upazilas covered under the extension component. The project will not take up any activity in the char area unless particular Upazila is covered under the extension component and no activity will be supported without social intermediation through NGOs to make sure that extension interventions are taken as per priorities of the target communities, the charlanders in this case. .

8.4.3 Participatory Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation

At the Union level, Union Resource Team, comprising DAE staff, partner NGO staff, DLS extension agent and DOF extension agent will be responsible for periodical monitoring. The Team’s job will be to assist CIG, PO and UP to periodically monitor project activities and their outcomes. Table below

Table 24: A tentative List of M&E indicators: Level Indicators Monitoring Monitoring Season -1 Season -2 Frequency Responsibility Input and Number of groups Half yearly UEFT/SAAO Output organized: CIG Half yearly PO Half yearly Number CIG Members Half yearly UEFT/SAAO Male Number CIG Members Half yearly Female Number of member trained Crop season UEFT/SAAO MALE Number of member trained Crop season FEMALE Number of demonstration Crop season UEFT/SAAO plots Local contribution Tk, Yearly UEFT/SAAO Local contribution : Number of members Outcome Demo farm Yield by Crop Yearly UEFT/SAAO Tons/ha Crop area ha by crop Year UEFT/SAAO Crop yield by crop ha Year UECC Backyard poultry Number Yearly UEFT/SAAO of household Average bird per household Goat/sheep number of Yearly UEFT/SAAO household Cattle Number of Yearly UEFT/SAAO household Number of cattle Dairy cow Number of Yearly UEFT/SAAO household Number of cow Average milk/cow Number of layer farms Yearly UEFT/SAAO Number of Layer bird Number of broiler farms Yearly UEFT/SAAO Av broiler/farm Aquaculture pond number Yearly UEFT/SAAO Aquaculture Pond ha Yearly catch/ha

References:

1. GOB 2004. Unlocking the Potentials (Draft). Planning Commission, Dhaka 2. GOB 2005a. Unlocking the Potentials. Planning Commission. Dhaka, Bangladesh. 3. GOB 2005b. Bangladesh Economic Survey, Dhaka. Ministry of Finance. 4. World Bank 2005a. Bangladesh Development Series: Revitaliz ing the Agricultural Technology Systems in Bangladesh. Dhaka, World Bank Office. 5. World Bank 2005b. Attaining the Millennium Development Goals in Bangladesh. 6. Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics 2004.a. Statistical Yearbook of Bangladesh. Dhaka, BBS. 7. Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics 2004.b.Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics of Bangladesh. Dhaka, BBS. 8. Baden, Sally 1994. Background Paper on Gender Issues in Bangladesh. Report # 26 prepared for the British High Commission, Dhaka. Bridge (Development – Gender), Sussex, IDS. 9. UNDP, Human Development Report 2005 10. Bangladesh Population Census 2001 11. Bangladesh Population Census 1991 12. Constitution of Bangladesh 13. GOB, Environment Policy, 1992 14. GOB, Environmental Conservation Act, 1995 15. GOB, Environment Conservation Rules, 1997 16. GOB, National Agriculture Policy, 1999 17. GOB, Actionable Policy Brief, Agriculture Sector Review. MOA. Dhaka 2004 18. GOB, National Fisheries Policy, 1998 19. GOB, National Water Policy, 1999 20. FAO, Plan of Action on National Agriculture Policy, 2003 21. Maniruzzaman 1999: How the Rural Poor Manage their Money in Rural Bangladesh, A Snapshot Study of Financial Services prepared for the IDPM, Manchester University 22. Maniruzaman 2000: How the Poor Manage Money in the Dhaka Slums, A Snapshot Study of Financial Services prepared for the IDPM, Manchester University.

National Agriculture Technology Project Extension Component Term of Reference for the Partner NGOs

1. Background Information

1.3 National Policy Framework

Achieving this massive rate of poverty reduction requires annual economic growth rate 6 to 7 percent on a susta ined basis and the bulk of the growth must come from the agriculture sector which is still the largest contributor to the GDP, 23% and the rural non farm sector which depends largely on agriculture accounts for another 33% of the GDP. These two sectors provide main livelihoods to three fourths of the rural people and the rural poor represent 85% of the poor people in Bangladesh. Thus poverty reduction essentially means reduction of rural poverty through support to agriculture sector.

While growth in the last couple of decades was rather encouraging, it was not accompanied with equity, hence had lower than proportionate impact on the poverty reduction. Had income inequality period not worsened, rural poverty would have declined further three percentage points, meaning that rural poverty could be below 40% by now.

In view of above, the recently released Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) of the Government and the Actionable Policy Brief recognized agriculture and rural development as the key sector for enhancing pro-poor growth and the Government gave highest priority to agriculture and identified the need for technological interventions to increase agricultural production.

1.4 The NATP and its Objectives and Components

Within the broader framework of poverty reduction strategy, the Government of Bangladesh with financial assistance of the World Bank has planned to execute a National Agricultural Technology Project (NATP). The NATP aims at achieving the following key objectives:

i. Strengthen the national agricultural technology system, j. Increase agricultural productivity in all sub sectors, k. Accelerated and diversified production systems, and l. Enhanced market opportunities and market linkages, especially of small and marginal producers of high value commodit ies.

The proposed NATP comprises three main components:

g. Agricultural Research Support: This will comprise establishment of an endowment fund to provide an income stream for supporting competitive grant program (which will be of short gestation period and demand driven field based research where public, private and NGO sectors as well as individuals will have access on competitive basis) and a longer term sponsored public good research in which mainly Agricultural Research Institutes (ARIs), Universities and other institutes are likely to participate. To manage the Competitive Grants Program (CGP), the GOB would establish an independent Bangladesh Agricultural Research Foundation, called Krishi Gobeshona Foundation (KGF) and the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) would have enhanced role in the National Agricultural Research System (NARS) through legal and other reforms and institutional efficiency enhancement.

5 Incidence of income poverty was 49.8% in 2000, and 42.1% in 2004, a decline from 59% in 1991. MDG aims to reduce poverty to about 30% by 2015. 72

h. Agricultural Extension Support: The main focus of the component will be to strengthen the emerging decentralized pluralistic extension system and enhancing their institutional efficiency. Decentralization of the extension services would be based on lessons learnt from successful approaches pilot tested in Bangladesh in the recent past, such as the Local Extension Agent in Fisheries (LEAF), the experiences of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) and in conformity with the relevant GOB policies, such as the National Agriculture Policy 1999, The National Fisheries Policy 1998 and New Agricultural Extension Policy, 1997.

The NATP extension support will cover both crop sector and fisheries and livestock sector extension services. The key element of decentralized extension system would include support to community based organizations comprising village level Common Interest Groups (CIG ) and their federation(s), Producer Organization (PO) at Upazila level and the UP level farmers’ information and advice centre FIAC), institutional efficiency enhancement, improved inter - agency cooperation and linkages with the private sector and NGO-provided extension services. This will also include better linkages between research, extension and farmers. Institutional efficiency enhancement will also include setting up of a revolving fund at the Upazila level from which the extension departments – Agricultural Extension, Livestock and Fisheries would take advance for operating expenses and replenish the same when funds for the same purpose are available from the Government.

i. Development of Value Chain: The main focus of the component would be a few selected high value commodities based on comparative advantage, farmer preference and market demand- for both local consumption and export. Indicative list of such commodities include (a) rice – for food security reason and the need for releasing land from this commercially low-remunerating crop for a more diversified cropping system, (b) maize- for demand as poultry feed, (c) horticulture crops (fruits, vegetables and floriculture), (d) livestock- mainly dairy and poultry, and (e) fisheries – mainly pond aquaculture and coastal shrimp aquaculture. The component comprises two sub- components – (i) farmer market linkages through promotion of contract farming and quality improvement; and (ii) knowledge management and technical support.

1.3 Geographical Coverage

The research component is nationwide by nature and would support research proposals coming from the ARIs and other relevant institutions located anywhere in Bangladesh. The extension component will be executed in about 120 Upazilas of 25 districts in five of the six administrative divisions. The Upazilas of northwestern Rajshahi division will not be included since ADB is assisting implementation of a similar project there. The Chittagong Hill districts will also not be included as separate institutional arrangement is required to take up GOB projects in the Hill Tract areas. The value chain component will cover selected Upazilas in any region. Under the second and third components, the Upazilas would be selected using a set of criteria including (a) poverty levels, (b) agro-ecological potential, (c) status of rural infrastructure, (d) status of natural resource base, and (e) institutional capacity. The project will provide list of Upazilas. 2. NATP and the Decentralized Extension Model

The relevant sector policies of the GOB – the National Agriculture Policy (NAP 1999), New Agricultural Extension Policy (1997), National Fisheries Policy (1998) and the Draft National Livestock policy all aim at delivering services to the farmers to increase production with emphasis to the landless, small and marginal farmer and women farmers and thereby contribute to reducing poverty. The execution of the policies demand decentralized service delivery mechanism, inter agency cooperation, networking with other service providers in the private and NGO sectors and research – extension – farmer linkage. The NATP, utilizing the policy directives of the NAEP in particular, has proposed to apply and institutionalize a Decentralized Extension Approach (DEA) covering crops, livestock and fisheries sub sectors. The proposed DEA model is presented in Figure - 1.

Figure -1: Model for Decentralized Extension Approach

Upazila Extension Coordination Committee 73 (UECC)

3.2.1.1 Group orientation, Empowe rment and Targeting of the Poor

Formation of the Common Interest Group and Producer Organization

Development of extension plan has always been a top down exercise. Under the Agricultural Support Services Project, DAE adopted the decentralized and participatory approach for developing and implementing the extension plan according to the principle of NAEP but the desired objectives could not be fully achieved because of many constraints. One of the main reasons for poor performance was partial adoption of the decentralized planning and implementation along with weak inter-agency cooperation and low involvement of the other extension service providers. With this learning the NATP strong linkage not only between the GOB extension departments, the DAE, DLS and DOF, but also between the GOB agencies and the other service providers in the private sector and NGOs. More importantly, the DEA with NATP support aims to establish and empower farmers’ community based organizations (CBOs) so that they can interact with the extension providers of both GO, NGO and private sectors and the local government.

2.1 Formation of Common Interest Group

The basic Units of the DAE model are Common Interest Groups (CIG), Producer Organizations (PO) and Upazila Extension Coordination Committee (UECC). This will enable and empower the farmers planning small interventions at the Village and Union level, called micro plans.

In the DEA, crop, livestock and fisheries farmers, fishers and women farmers will be organized into homogenous common interest groups (CIG) at the Village level for crops and Union level for fisheries and livestock. These groups will be federated with the Producer Organization at the Upazila level. Here

homogeneity means the group members belong to a particular socio economic group, small and marginal farmers (male farmers owning 0.2 to 1 ha cultivable land), landless farmers (male farmers owning only homestead land and a maximum of 0.2 ha cultivable land), medium and large farmers (male farmers owning above 1 ha cultivable land), aquaculture farmers (male farmers owning/operating a fish pond, any farm size), fishers (male fishers, preferably landless or owning below 0.2 ha cultivable land) livestock farmers (male farmers mainly engaged in commercial dairy and poultry farming, any farm size) and women farmers (preference: women of female headed households, poor and landless engaged in homestead agriculture, horticulture, poultry, livestock, pond aquaculture). Homogeneity in CIG is desired to prevent elite capture and more or less equitable participation of various socioeconomic groups in all project activities taken together but the poor and women getting preference in certain areas.

In total, about 36,000 CIGs will be formed at village level in a total of 1,200 Union Parishad of 120 selected Upazila in 25 districts. Each Union Parishad will have 30 CIGs. Each CIG will comprise about 25 members.

It is targeted that 9 of the 30 CIGs per Union Parishad will be groups of women farmers of target households as stated in the above paragraph. Another 6 of the 30 CIGs per UP will be groups of landless farmers, 9 will be groups of small and marginal farmers and the remaining 6 of the 30 CIGs will be groups of medium to large farmers. These are approximate distribution which may vary depending on actual pattern of landholding in particular UP or Upazila.

Each CIG will comprise about 25 members and each group shall have freedom to decide what farming activities they will be engaged in. However, care will be taken to ensure that each group comprises members interested in one particular activity as far as project support is concerned. For example, within nine CIGs for women in one UP, those interested in say backyard poultry will included in backyard poultry groups. Some others may be interested in homestead gardening or home based pond aquaculture and will be included in such groups. It is unlikely that women will be interested, say in maize farming or open water fisheries because such activities are likely to be located far away from the house and are unlikely to be women-friendly. But some women groups may be interested in post-harvest work using thresher and other equipment and some others may be interested in seed preservation of small agribusiness. The decision is theirs.

The field extension agencies and the partner NGOs will recognize that farming in rural Bangladesh is very integrated. The same household produces a variety of crops, rear cattle and poultry and may have a small fish pond. However each farm household will opt to join a particular CIG of his or her choice and the groups will be organized as they wish. The project does not set any target of crop, fishery or livestock CIGs per UP or Upazila. It will vary across region.

The purpose of decentralization of extension service is to work with the common interest groups of farmers (CIGs) at the village level, about 30 per UP and 300 per Upazila and producer organizations (POs) one per Upazila, to develop a bottom up demand-led joint extension plans for crops, livestock and fisheries. The CIGs and POs will be the key players in extension planning, who will be supported for development of extension plan around livelihood activities of the participating farming communities.

The functions of the CIGs will include but not necessarily limited to:

· Participate in the formulation and execution of the micro plans, which will comprise farmer training, extension support, demonstration of technologies, input supply and market linkage etc. · Elect or select representatives for the Producer Organization, · Demand and create pressure on the extension agencies effectively operating the FIAC ensuring regular service delivery to farmers during and beyond the project period, and · Interact with similar other farmers and help them accessing extension services at the FIAC.

The Union Extension Facilitation Team (UEFT), composed of local NGO representative, Sub-Assistant Agricultural Officer (Block Supervisor) of DAE, Local Extension Agent for Fisheries (LEAF) of DOF, 75

and Community Extension Agent for Livestock (CEAL) of DLS will provide necessary support in group formation. New CIGs will be formed where they do not already where they do not exist or new CIGs may be formed through reorganizing or reactivating of such groups already functioning well.

2.2 The Producer Organization

Following the establishment of most of the CIGs (say 80%), the process of forming the Producer Organization, as Upazila level federations of the CIGs will be started by the partner NGOs in cooperation with the extension agencies and with the support of the UECC and URT.

Each PO may comprise one representative per UP of crop sector CIGs and three representatives of women CIGs and two representatives of livestock sector CIGs and two representatives of fisheries sector CIGs. The ten crop sector CIG representatives will be selected or elected (if unanimous selection not possible) by the CIG members at the UP level while the fisheries, livestock and women representatives will be selected/elected by the respective CIGs of the whole Upazila.

The functions of the POs will include but not necessarily be limited to the following: · Advise URT and UECC on extension priorities, · Participate in finalizing the Upazila extension plans, · Negotiate with the Ba nks and NGOs to improve access to credit for the CIGs, if required, · Contribute to improving supply of quality inputs to farmers by creating demand, providing information and maintaining liaison the involved GOB agencies, NGOs and private companies and traders/dealers, and · Negotiate with agribusiness enterprises for contract farming of high value commodities.

Training would be organized for orientation and creating awareness of the CIGs and PO members about their responsibilities and rights to access various services, including mobilization of inputs and farm credits. All training events for CIG and PO members will be organized at the Union Parishad Training Room as well as at the Upazila Training Facility (UTF), depending on the type of courses offered.

3. The Roles and Tasks of the Partner NGOs

The formation of the CBOs comprising the CIGs and their federation at the Upazila level will be a bottom-up institution building process. Therefore the CIGs at the village level will be formed at the very beginning of the project activities and immediately after the recruitment of the partner NGOs. Therefore, recruitment of the partner NGO will be an initial project activity, immediately after establishing the project offices in the selected district and Upazilas.

The Roles and Tasks of the partner NGOs in the NATP will comprise but not necessarily be limited to the following:

a. Study relevant sector policies such as PRSP, NAP, NAEP, NFP, NATP project documents and consultant’s report on the extension, social assessment, environment and M&E to make sure that the activities undertake and methods applied are in track with the general policy framework and comply with the requirements of the social and environmental safeguards. b. In cooperation with the extension agencies, conduct village level surveys using basic PRA tools as indicated in Annex-2.

c. In cooperation with the extension agencies, facilitate conducting group meetings and keeping records of the decisions and financial transactions of groups in the initial one year and later hand over the responsibility to the group leader guided by extension agency staff. d. Identify villages and target households by socio economic categories to form CIGs and POs as per guidelines provided in Annexes-2 and 3. e. The partner NGOs shall have key role in facilitating the whole process of identifying and organizing the CIGs and federating them at the UP level as outlined in section 2.2 above and as per guidelines provided in the annexes-2 and 3. f. The partner NGOs shall have key role in facilitating the whole process of preparing yearly Micro Plans with each interested CIG and help their prioritization and consolidation into Union Micro Plans as per guidelines provided in Annex-4. g. Assist UECC, URT and UEFT effectively targeting the poorer sections including women and ensuring equitable participation of primary stakeholders of all socio economic groups in the CIGs and POs and prevent any possibility of elite capture as per social safeguards management plan provided in Annex-8. h. Participate in the activities of the UEFT and the URT and assist in the planning and monitoring activities of the UP and the UECC. i. Participate in various project activities of the extension agencies at the district and Upazila levels such as technology demonstration, training and fairs. j. Establish and maintain linkage with regional research activities of the ARIs like BARI, BRRI, FRI, BLRI and interact with them to familiarize with their locally suited technology packages in order to aware CIGs and POs of their benefits. k. Will draw up a program of integrating the support to the CIGs and POs into their own program. l. In cooperation with the extension agencies will conduct orientation training of CIG members. The orientation courses for CIG and PO members would be organized to:

· Create awareness of the farmers and familiarize them with the objectives of decentralized extension approach, and their rights to access services provided by different agencies, NGOs and private sector enterprises, · Build capacity of the farmers and the CBOs to enhance their ability to play an increasingly dominant role in formulating and implementing the micro plans plans, · Increase technical skills of the farmers on the use of improved technologies and production packages, interacting with the extension agencies beyond project perion and helping other farmers solving similar problems and accessing the extension agencies at FIAC during and beyond project period. · Increase organizational skills of the CIGs and PO leaders in identifying, articulating and presenting own needs, managing groups and keeping records of financial transactions and decisions of group meetings. · Enabling the CIGs and PO continuing the activities without NGO support or special project funding but definitely accessing and creating demand for continued need based extension services of the extension departments and enhancing the CBO’s linkages with other service providers in the private and mainstream NGO and local government.

4. NGO Recruitment Process

The project will engage competent partner NGOs in each Upazila/district. In smaller projects covering three or four adjoining districts and about a dozen or so Upazilas small local NGOs are engaged and one NGO usually covers one Upazila. This strategy will be unmanageable in a nationwide project covering 120 Upazilas in 25 districts. NATP may hire medium to large national NGOs covering 5 to 10 Upazilas in one to three adjoining districts. It has been experienced in several projects that medium to large NGOs having already institutionalized programs in the area continue to their activities beyond project period. Very new ones in the area and the too small ones tend to discontinue immediately after closing of the contract period. Further, working in 5 to 10 Upazilas in the adjoining districts will be manageable by a medium NGO based in the area or from their regional office in the case of larger ones. Such NGOs will

be able to utilize facilities of regional office such as residential training facilities, technology demonstration facilities and logistics.

The NGO selection process will comprise activities three stages such as (a) invitation for expression of interest, (b) short listing, (c) evaluation of technical and financial proposal and (d) awarding of contract and signing of agreement.

1. Invitation for Expression of Interest

Selection criteria

a. The applicant NGO must have office and ongoing program in the district and Upazilas applied for at least for three consecutive years b. Must have valid legal registration at least for five consecutive years c. Valid FD registration from the NGO Bureau renewed regularly at least for three consecutive years d. Must have audited report for the immediate past year or a year e. Experience of executing projects in the agriculture, fisheries and livestock sectors is preferable f. Executives with agriculture, fisheries, livestock and Social Science education (B.Sc. Hons or M.Sc.) will carry higher weight g. Staff with agriculture degree or diploma will carry higher weight. h. Having training venue in the district or Upazilas applied for will carry higher weight i. Having logistic facilities like transport, laboratory facility and equipment will carry higher weight.

NGO application failing to satisfy first four criteria will be outright rejected. Others will be ranked on scoring based on the last five criteria, each 10 marks.

2. Short listed NGOs will be invited to submit Technical and Financial proposals. The Technical proposal will have 80% weight and those technically qualified will be judged on the basis of financial offer carrying 20% weight.

3. The selection process must satisfy the relevant procurement rules.

5. Reporting

(i) Inception report containing (a) mobilization of staff and logistics, (b) activity plan, (c) methods and approaches, (d) risks and problems foreseen in executing the tasks and (e) likely remedial measures. – Within one month of contract.

(ii) Progress Report containing (a) Expenditure against item wise budget and funds received during the preceding period and cumulative (b) Progress of activities undertaken against planned and the reason for delays, if any, (c) Problems/ constraints in executing planned activities, (d) Suggested corrective actions. – Half yearly and yearly.

Information provided in the report will be segregated by Upazila and District. Reports will be submitted to the Project Director with copies to District heads of DAE, DLS and DOF and relevant Upazila parts to the Upazila heads of executing agencies and UECC members.

Union Part of the progress reports will be shared with the members of the UEFT and UP Chairman.

Annex-1

The GOB Extension Policies and Partnership with NGOs

The relevant GOB policies are National Agriculture Policy (NAP) 1999, New Agricultural Extension Policy (NAEP) 1996, National Fisheries Policy (NFP) 1998 and National Livestock Policy (NLP), draft to be approved by the GOB.

The over all aim of the NAP is “to make the nation self-sufficient in food through increasing production of all crops including cereals and ensure a dependable food security system for all”. The scope of NAP is very wide with 18 subsidiary objectives. The NAEP covers the extension part of the NAP mainly relevant to the crop sub sector of which the DAE is the main extension agency.

The aim of NAEP is to increase the efficiency and productivity of agriculture through a partnership approach and intends to provide extension service to all categories of farmers with emphasis to the women farmers, small and marginal farmers and the landless.

Like NAEP for the crop sector, the GOB has formulated the National Fisheries Policy (NFP) in 1998 with the following objectives:

1) Enhancing fisheries resources and production 2) Generating self employment for poverty alleviation of fishers 3) Meeting the demand of animal proteins 4) Increasing foreign exchange earning 5) Maintaining ecological balance, conserving bio-diversity and improving public health.

The proposed livestock policy is however at the draft stage. The proposed objectives include:

(a) Promotion of Small holder dairy and poultry development through private sector interventions (b) Development of goat, buffaloes and duck in high potential areas through special projects (c) Institutional Reform of DLS to perform public functions, enactment of laws and regulations for quality control of drugs, feeds and breeding materials (d) Privatization of vaccine production and veterinary services (e) Exploring all alternatives for production of fodder.

DLS in line with proposed Livestock Policy has developed a Road Map of Action Plan which includes:

· Expansion of animal health cares through Community Based Organizations (CBOs) · Strengthening of veterinary services at Upzilla and Union Levels through its rural service centers. · Support private sectors for promotion of livestock agribusiness and agro-processing. · Supporting production, quality control and standardization of feeds, breeding materials and drugs. · Enhancing Institutional Reform for making DLS as a public good service.

There is one common element in all of the three extension policies. This concerns emphasizing partnership between the GOB extension departments and the other service providers – the NGOs and the private sector. Based on the abovementioned policy direction, the NATP would encourage cooperation between the GOB extension department and the NGO and private extension providers.

The main GOB extension service providers are DAE for crops, DLS for livestock and DOF for fisheries. They have their own extension networks throughout the country to plan and provide services independently. Besides the public sector extension agencies, many other players are now active in this field. The private sector extension service providers include: a large number of national and international NGOs, input traders, community-based organizations, youth groups, and civil societies providing various types of services, including skill training, input supply, market linkage, technology and micro-credit. The nature of delivering extension services has now changed with the participation of these actors. 79

The GOB extension agencies have experience of working with NGOs and the results are encouraging. Further, a number of NGOs like BRAC have developed expertise and training facilities etc. Further they are specialized in organizing beneficiary groups and reaching services to them. Therefore, the involvement of NGOs in the NATP extension component is positively considered.

Annex-2

Guidelines for Formation of CIGs and Micro Plan Preparation

Group Size and Type

I. A group would be composed of 15-25 farmers with focus on landless, small and marginal farmers and women farmers. II. Usually each type of group for crops, livestock and fisheries would be composed of farmers of the same socio-economic status producing crops, livestock and fish at individual and community level . III. Horticulture groups would be consisted of farmers producing identical commodities or commodity packages as far as practicable in the local context in particular group but different groups may be interested in different crops. Intercropping and relay cropping will be treated a crop package.

Objectives of the formation of CIGs

The fundamental idea in the GIG approach is to put the farmer in the centre of all attention. The objectives, therefore stress the human development first: · Improve farmers’ analytical skills and decision making capacity · Enhance farmers’ problem solving skills through testing and adoption of improved methods · Make farmers experienced in new and improved technologies · Generate research priorities for basic research and revalidation of promising technologies. · Diffuse knowledge earned in the community. · Promote HVA and Contract Farming for development of agro based industries.

Functions of CIGs

The main functions of the CIGs will include but not necessarily be limited to: · Participate in the formulation and execution of the micro plans, which will comprise farmer training, extension support, demonstration of technologies, input supply and market linkage etc. · Elect or select representatives for the Producer Organization, · Demand and create pressure on the extension agencies effectively operating the FIAC ensuring regular service delivery to farmers during and beyond the project period, and · Interact with similar other farmers and help them accessing extension services at the FIAC.

Steps in formation of CIGs

Step 1: Village and UP level meeting : UP Chair, UP members, Women Members, partner NGO, UEFT members and cross section of local farmers including women farmers, total 30 to 50 participants will be briefed on the project approach (DEA) and the importance of organizing farmers into CIGs and Pos. The participants will be requested to think whether the UP and particular villages would like to participate. The will be given a week time to think and report to the UEFT if they are interested and to identify most potential and most interested village communities by areas of interest (crops, livestock, fisheries, horticulture, women groups etc). This process will be completed in about one month in all UP (about 10) by the UEFT spending one day in each UP and splitting the NGO workers into two teams.

Step 2: PRA at the village level: The members of UEFT are the key informants for selection of villages and farmers of a CIG. UEFT would conduct feasibility surveys to gather information on homesteads, land and soil types, livelihood activities around crop, livest ock and fisheries, number of families, their socio-economic status, literacy rate, access to communication and availability of inputs.

From the many tools of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), Transact walk, Social Mapping, Well Being Analysis and Household Census might be used. a. Transact walk: Transact walk by NGO staff with SAAO, LEAF, CEAL and UP member to have a glance of the village proposed to be included. The NGO staff will produce a brief note of the village indicating: Name of paara, paara location, approximate number of households, ethnic and religious composition, land types, cropping pattern, potential crops, livestock and fisheries, major constraints and likely priorities. This will require one day for fieldwork for one NGO staff and follo wing day for report writing for one village comprising about 300 households. Larger villages would need two consecutive days for fieldwork and one day for report writing. b. Social Mapping: This will be participatory by groups of village men, women and youth with the facilitation of NGO staff. They will draw a map of the village showing roads, canals, farm area, settlement area, individual houses and households, ponds, schools, NGO office, UP office mosques, temples etc. Different types of households: female-headed, landless, small/Marginal farmers, non-poor will be shown by different colour. This will require 2 to 3 days in each viallage and an additional day for validation. This map will be treated a draft which will be further improved after household census. c. Household Census: This will produce a list all households of the village as per following information in spread sheet

1. Serial Number 2. Name of household head 3. Sex of household head 4. Age of household head 5. Number of household members 6. Number of ear ning males 7. Number of earning females 8. Homestead land owned decimals 9. Cultivable land owned decimals 10. Main Occupation of household 11. Second Occupation of household 12. Income level compared to household size: Very poor, poor, lower middle, upper mid, rich 13. Program interest: Crop agriculture, horticulture, cattle, poultry, aquaculture, fishing 14. Any additional information d. Wellbeing Analysis: This will be a participatory exercise with the facilitation of the NGO staff in cooperation with other UEFT members but information coming from the villagers. Information already collected through transact, social mapping and household census will be used plus knowledge of the local informants in groups of 5 persons. A simple wellbeing analysis format is given below:

A sample of a Well Being Analysis of a village might include information as shown below:

Name of village : Union: Upazila: Characteristics/ Resources Rich Farmer Small & Marginal Landless Farmer (Homestead (> 3 ha land) Medium Farmer Farmer (0.2 to 1 ha + below 0.2 ha cult land) (1-3 ha land) land) No of Families Average Family member Occupational Category: - Crop farmers (nos) - Dairy farmers (nos) - Cattle fattening farmers - Goat/sheep farmers - Backyard poultry farmer

- Poultry farms Nos - Aquaculture ponds (nos) - Non aquaculture ponds - Aquaculture farmers - Fisher families Major crops (ha): - Rice / family - Wheat/ family - Jute/ family - Fruits/veg (# / family)

- Potential crops:

Irrigation facilities - DTW Numbers - STW Numbers - LLP Numbers Poverty % Households Adult Literacy Male Adult Literacy Female Service Access: Access to Extension Serv Input access Market access Formal Banking Service MFI Access One village one day village meeting by NGO facilitator along with SAAO, LEAF, CEAL

The above mentioned steps will help the UEFT to identify potential villages for participation in the project’s extension activities.

Step 3: General Meeting: Provided the abovementioned steps identified a particular village as potential and the village community represented by the UP member and endorsed by the UP Chairman formally requested the UEFT to initiate CIG formation in particular village, this step will begin.

The NGO staff in consultation with other UEFT members and community leaders (both formal – UP Member, Women Member and informal – interested farmers, village matbar, existing NGO/BRDB groups etc) will fix a date, time and place of the meeting and will inform the community people by written notice and house to house contact, if necessary.

The meeting discuss project objectives, goals and interventions and the need for organizing communities. Initially in each meeting 30-40 male and female farmers should be invited to make them aware of the project: · Objectives · Potential benefits of the groups and group members · Methods of forming CIGs, and · Functions and responsibilities

In the general meeting of a group, a certain number of interested farmers will be listed. In a follow-up meeting of the interested farmers names will be added or deleted to make number of members between 15 to 25 living in proximity, belonging to same socio economic group, gender and interested in a particular extension service – crops, livestock, fisheries. Finally a group leader will be selected by consensus. Consensus, rather than voting is suggested at the CIG level since the groups are small and after all they have common interest. The leadership may rotate annually.

Once a group is formed, the next task is ‘Signing of an Agreement’ or group bylaws. The NGO may provide a standard text but it is up to the members to agree or disagree on the text. However, the project’s

sociologist and gender specialist will assist with a common format specifying minimum points to agree. The outcome of forming a GIG will be recorded in a register book and communicated to UP and UECC Chairman.

Criteria for selecting village and UP where CIGs will be formed

In each selected Upazila average 10 UPs will be selected. Also it will not be possible to cover all villages in the selected Upazila and UP. Therefore prioritization will be needed base on PRA results.

The village selection criteria could include:

Those deprived in the recent past projects Those strategically located to demonstrate results to other villages Those having high potential in certain high-value crops, fisheries, livestock, agribusiness etc. Those having higher concentration of poor households and poor women. Those with good potential to build sustainable CIGs Those demonstrating good interest to participate.

Annex-3 Guidelines for Group Formation (CIG)

I. Target clients : * Landless farmers owning homestead land only and maximum 0.2 ha cultivable land (20% or 6 CIGs in each UP) * Small and Marginal Farmers having land ownership of 0.2 ha one ha cultivable land (30% or 9 CIGs in each UP) * Medium and large farmers owning above 1 ha cultivable land (20% or 6 CIG in each UP)

II. Gender : At least 30 percent groups (9 CIGs in each UP) should of female farmers out of total 30 CIGs. III. Homogeneity : Of the same socio-economic status. No mix group with male and female members and mix of interest in crops, livestock and fisheries.

IV. Group Size : 15-25 members in one group

V. Age structure : Minimum age 18 years

VI. Location : Members are permanent residents and preferably from same village/adjacent. Absentee farmers cannot be members.

VII. Membership : One from one household will be member of one CIG under the project. More than one person from one household shall not be accepted even in different groups. This is required to help wider distribution of project benefits.

VIII. Education : No bar IX. Existing NGO Group/ other Groups : Existing groups acceptable but should be restructured if needed. X. Willingness and Interests : Farmers willing to work in groups should be selected.

XI. Household selection criteria: 1. Poverty as per quota for each stratum 2. Past deprivation 3. Prospect 4. Willingness and capacity to disseminate learning to other farmers

Annex-4

Guidelines for Preparation of Micro Plans

Preparation of Union Micro-Plan will be initiated at CIG level and each CIG will prepare its own micro plan for one year. The partner NGO staff and in cooperation with other UEFT members will facilitate the preparation of the micro plan at the CIG level and their prioritization at the UP level. The process will involve a number of activities to be preformed at sequential stages as elaborated below:

Stage 1: Conducting Problem Census Activity Participants Resource person Duration Venue · FINA & PCC methodology Members of NGO staff as 1 day for CIG village · Identification of each CIG facilitator, other each CIG Needs/problems UEFT members · Prioritizing of Problems provide assistance

Stage 2: Interventions/Activities for Solving identified Problems Problems prioritized Interventions/ Facilitation Duration Venue Activities proposed by CIG Farmers Problem 1 : Members of 1 day CIG village CIG NGO staff and other Problem 2 : UEFT members

Problem 3 :

Problem 5 :

Stage 3: Compilation of activities for micro -plan (Separate table to be used for crop /livestock /fisheries) A. Crops Types and number Responsibility Estimated cost Estimated List of agreed (common) of Activities for each total cost and disagreed problems Activities No activity (Taka) (Taka) on priority basis Problem 1 : * B * E Problem 2 : * R Problem 3 : S Problem 4: * Problem 5 :

Stage 4: Consolidation of an Union Micro-Plan (activities shown are just examples)

Sector/ Total Activity Types and number of activities with estimated costs involved estimated

Training of Demonstration Extension Kits Exposure Visits costs (Tk) Farmers No Cost No Cost No Cost No Cost (Tk) (Tk) (Tk) (Tk) A. Crops B. Livestock C. Livestock D. HVA/ Horticulture TOTAL of UP

Stage 5: Aggregation of Upazilla Extension Plan

Once the Union Micro-Plans are prepared, the next step would be aggregation of the Union Plans into an Upazilla Plan. This would involve holding of workshops of UECC members for analysis, synthesis and prioritization of extension activities and research problems.

Individual UECC would arrange workshops for analyzing and synthesizing of the Micro Plans of the Unions of the Upazilla for aggregation into an Upazilla Plan. Activities to be performed are:

Activity 1: Prioritization and synthesis of extension activities for crop, livestock, fisheries and HVA. Action : Decide priorities and appropriate technologies for extension activities Activity 2 : Identification of problems for research Action : Decide technologies for participatory action research. This would involve DECC and RLRC validation and guidelines. Activity 3 : Aggregation of plan and finalization of Budget. Action : Decide activities for extension and action research activities with costing and accord approval. Activity 4 : Identification of areas for HRD. Action : Arrange training for updating of Knowledge of UECC, URT and UEFT members and farmers on selected technologies. Activity 5 : Development of Implementation Plan Action : Line departments develop work plan and work schedule. Activity 6 : Identification of logistic support, renovation of facilities for training, equipment and machinery, furniture, training aids etc. Action : Ensure logistics supports. Activity 7 : Reporting, Monitoring and Evaluation Action : Ensure periodic reporting as per set program.

Annex-5

Decentralized Planning and Funding of Extension Plans

The management responsibility of extension planning and funding will be devolved to the Upazila Office of the line departments (DAE, DLS and DOF). The present Upazila Agricultural Extension Coordination Committee has been recast and renamed as Upazila Extension Coordination Committee (UECC). This Committee will have the responsibility of supervising and coordinating the formation of CIGs and POs, training of CIG and PO members and training of extension agents, formulation of Union micro extension plans and priorities for crops, livestock and fisheries, aggregation of the Union plans into Upazila extension plans, approving the Upazila plans and the implementation of extension plans.

Decentralized extension planning: Extension planning will be done in two stages: Union micro extension planning and aggregation of Union micro plans into Upazila extension plans. The Union Extension Facilitation Team (UEFT) will facilitate and support the CIGs in problem identification and preparation of extension micro plans and priorities, focusing on the need of small, marginal and women farmers, using the village as the planning unit. Each Union micro plan would reflect the priority needs of the farmers expressed through Problem Census for crops, livestock, fisheries and horticulture. Upazila Resource Team (URT) composed of Upazila Junior extension officers of DAE, DOF and DLS, and representatives of local research station and NGO(s) will assist UECC in reviewing and aggregating the Union extension micro plans into Upazila extension plan. The Upazila plans will include the type and number of activities and budget. UECC will review the plans, priorities and budgets and send the consolidated plan to DECC for comments. Upon receipt of DECC’s comments, UECC will approve the plan for implementation. If the comments from DECC is not received on time, UECC would go ahead in approving and implementing the plans.

UECC will organize training of extension staff of the line departments, private sector and NGO staff on the concept of decentralized extension planning and in other tec hnical and management topics at the Upazila Training Facility (UTF).

Funding and fund flow: More than 90% of public funding for extension activities received through revenue budget is used for salaries and allowances. Operational funds are provided through development budget to support time-bound project activities in specific areas. Funding for mainstream extension activities of the line departments is extremely limited. It is proposed that GOB gradually increase budgetary allocation at a level that can allow the line departments to allocate at least 30% of the total revenue and development budgets for meeting the operational costs in the long run. The project will provide matching funds for implementation of the extension plans to be developed in 120 Upazilas, selected under this project.

It is proposed that the Government allocations from both revenue and development budgets are disbursed directly to the Upazila Offices through the headquarters of the line departments. Periodic financial statements wil l be submitted by the Upazila line departments to their headquarters with a copy to the PCU financial management office. Funding arrangements, fund flow and fund management, including institutional and operational arrangements of Upazila funds are given in detail in Chapter 4 (Financial Management) of the Implementation Plan.

Annex-6

Institutional Support to the Decentralized Extension Approach Model

The main focus of the Agricultural Extension Support under the NATP extension component would be establishment of a decentralized extension approach (DEA) which will motivate and empower farmers to formulate their demands for the extension services . The extension programs will be knowledge -based and will provide need-based services covering crops, livestock and fisheries sub-sectors. The head of each line department of DAE, DLS and DoF working at Upazilla level would be the key persons of the DEA.

While the CIG, PO and the Union Micro Plans are the basic structure of the DAE, its proper construction and functioning will involve support of several subsoil foundation, the institutional support components including the following:

Upazilla Training Facility (UTF)

For capacity building of stakeholders with respect to development of their technical knowledge and management skills, training support will be a continuous activity. An independent venue as UTF of at least 2 rooms; one for training and meeting and the other for office-cum-secretariat of DEA would be developed by renovating an existing facility of DAE, DLS or DoF. UECC’s meetings and workshops would be also held at frequent intervals. Few UECCs have an independent and well equipped facility for holding such training and other activities.

Upazilla Resource Team ( URT )

Heads of Upazilla level offices of DAE, DLS and DoF usually remain very busy for various regulatory, departmental and extra-departmental activities. To assist them in the functioning of the DEA, especially in respect of imparting trainings to farmers and field extension agents, UEFT members and NGO workers an URT would be composed. The URT will comprise:

· Additional Agricultural Officer/Agricultural Extension officer of DAE, · Veterinary Surgeon of DLS, · Assistant Upazilla Fisheries Officer of DoF · One representative of local NGO and · One representative regional research station of nearest ARI, if possible.

Farmers Information and Advisory Centre (FIAC) at UP office

Union is the lowest local government unit in rural Bangladesh. It is run by an elected Chairman and 12 members including 3 women members. The UP is usually involved in rural infrastructure building and maintenance like rural roads, small bridges and culverts. Informally the UP resolves most conflicts in the communities and formally participates in most local level divisible components of centrally administered GOB development activities. But such developments are not participatory in nature. The UPs are simply receivers of any development given from above. They can not demand, since the plans are top-down.

Over the last few years, the GOB (LGED) has constructed two-storied Union Complex building in many Union Parishads. The new UP complex accommodates offices of all field level GOB departments under one roof and the DAE has been allocated one room. This will be utilized as FIAC. The UP complex is largely under utilized and more rooms can be allocated to accommodate DLS and DOF facilities and partner NGO. Even the UPs without new complex should be able to accommodate FIAC. The project will assist Union Parishad to furnish the FIAC. The members of Union Extension Facilitation Team (U EFT), SAAO(s) of DAE, and LEAF of DOF, Community Extension Agents (CEAL) of DLS and representatives of NGOs would use the facility for providing continuous supports to farmers.

Services to be available to farmers from FIAC include:

I. The room available now would be equipped with necessary furniture and training aids through project support for regular training of farmers. II. At least one SAAO on rotation and other representatives of the UEFT will be available at the FIAC to dispense advice to visiting farmers on availability and source of quality inputs like seeds, feeds, fertilizer, medicines for livestock and problems related to crops, livestock and fish eries and the FIAC shall remain open all working days during office hours. III. Arrange periodic artificial insemination and vaccination of cattle, goats and poultry birds. IV. Extension materials like booklets, leaflets, other visual print materials prepared by the UECC and line departments will be available for visiting farmers. V. Arrange knowledge sharing visits for CIGs to research station, private farms, agribusiness centres.

Union Extension Facilitation Team (UEFT)

UEFT members would be the front line extension service providers to farmers at the village level. They would also be the key persons in operating the One -Stop Service Center of an UP.

The composition of UEFT: 1. SAAO of DAE working in one Union: 2 - 3 2. LEAF of DoF (To be developed): 1 - 2 3. CEAL of DLS (to be develope d: 1 - 2 4. NGO representatives working in the Union

Roles and functions of UEFT members: 1. Assist formation of CIGs (new CIG formation or reorganizing existing ones, if any). 1. Identify extension priorities of groups through FINA and other tools 2. Consolidate extension priorities and prepare Union Micro plan 3. Assist preliminary approval of plan at the UP level and forward to UECC. 4. Develop work plan and work schedule. 5. Arrange and impart trainings to CIGs as per plan 6. Assist CIGs in implementation of extension activities 7. Develop and enforce rotational visits to CIGs and liaise with UP 8. Monitor CIG, Micro Plan and other activities report to UECC 9. Network with other service providers.

Annex-7

Promotion of High Value Agriculture (HVA) and Market Chain Development

Support to high value agriculture is an important component of the NATP. The partner NGOs are expected to assist the CIGs accessing such support services of the project as well as similar other services of extension provides.

The NATP recognizes that production of high value commodities like fruits, vegetables, shrimp, milk, egg, meat and poultry, offers high opportunities to diversify sources of income of small and marginal farmers. Such non -cereal commodities are also a larger part of the incremental income of people of areas. In addition, there is a growing export market for horticultural products and shrimps in Middle East, Europe and the Untied States. In response to the increasing demand for fruits, vegetables, eggs shrimps etc. at home and abroad, farmers are shifting land from cereal crops to high value agricultural commodities. These changes have also created opportunities for value addition through improved post harvest management and agro-processing into finished or semi-finished products both for the domestic and foreign markets.

But growth of the high value commercial agriculture is hindered by a number of constraints, to name, are:

· Lack of high yielding varieties · Inadequate production technologies · Weak technology dissemination · Poor post harvest management practices like, handling, grading, packaging, transportation to markets. · Inadequate market access and marketing arrangement · Syndication of market by groups of profit making business opportunists · Poor infrastructure facilities like cold storage, pack house etc. · Limited private sector investment in agro-processing · Inadequate food safety regulations for foreign markets · High cost and limited air cargo space for quick air transportation.

Promotion of commercial HVA requires a two-way support; assisting farmers in all ways to build their capacity and capability for increasing production and involvement of private sector to procure, process and export high value commodities.

MoA, MoFL, BARC, ARIs and extension service providers like DAE, DLS and DoF will be involved in the facilitation role of providing technical assistance and logistics supports to farmers, private sector and NGOs. The facilitation role of research and extension should involve issues like:

· Assess research and exten sion priorities · Development of an action plan to build skills of researchers, extension providers, producers, and exporters · Development of a regulatory framework for an effective system of food quality and safety assurance including sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures. The NGO’s role will be facilitating linkage between such service provider with the CIGs and POs.

Annex-8

Social Safeguards

1. Introducing Social Safeguards

The NATP extension activities will be very participatory in nature, to be planned at the village level and consolidated at the UP and Upazila levels where the common interest groups of farmers and local government will be actively involved. Therefore it can be expected that the projects’ extension activities are pro-poor and they adequately take in to account of the interests of the weaker groups like the landless, poor and women. However, there remains some concern like elite capture.

A comprehensive view of the social safeguards management elements is provided in Figure 1. It comprises legislative as well as non legislative institutional elements. The legislative elements include constitutional provisions and relevant national laws, policies and guidelines. The non legislative elements include awareness, mitigating measures, M&E and the relevant institutions.

Figure – 1: Social Safeguards Management Elements

2 Legislative Framework a. Constitutional provisions:

The constitution of the people’s republic of Bangladesh pledges

“Ensure participation of women in all spheres of national life.” – Article 10.

Ensure “effective participation by the people through their elected representatives in administration at all levels” – Article 11.

“Emancipate the toiling masses – the peasants and workers – and backward sections of the people from all forms of exploitation”. – Article 14.

Ensure “ basic necessities of life – food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare; and agriculture and rural development and compulsory and free education for children”. – Articles 15 to 17.

Ensure “ equality before law” - Article 27.

Ensure “ freedom of association as fundamental rights” - Article 38.

All of the above constitutional provisions are important since they pledge not only equality, but also special safeguards for the weaker section of the society.

b. The relevant social safeguard policies, Acts, Rules and Strategies:

The Government of Bangladesh has several important policies pertaining to development of agriculture – crops agriculture, fisheries and livestock and the policies incorporate social safeguards in relation to the development of agriculture, besides economic growth strategies. Such policies include:

19. National Agriculture Policy, 1999 20. New Agricultural Extension Policy, 1996 21. Implementation Strategy of National Agriculture Extension Policy, 1997 22. Actionable Policy Brief and Resource Implications, 2004 23. National Fisheries Policy, 1998 24. National Fisheries Strategy, 2006 (yet be approved along with 8 sub strategies) 25. National Environment Policy, 1992 26. Environment Conservation Act, 1995 27. Environment Conservation Rules, 1997 28. National Women Development Policy, 1997 revised in 2004 29. Prevention of Women and Children Repression Act, 2000, revised in 2003 30. National Water Policy, 1999 31. Guidelines on Participatory Water Management, 2000 32. National Land Use Policy, 2001 33. National Rural Development Policy, 2001 34. National Forestry Policy, 1994 35. National Food and Nutrition Policy, 1997 36. Comprehensive Food Security Policy (Draft), 2000

The above GOB policies in general emphasize equity and give special attention to the disadvantaged groups. Some of the most relevant policies emphasize the following:

The National Agriculture Policy, 1999: highlights as one of its 18 main objectives as under:

To protect interests of the small, marginal and tenant farmers

Under research section of the NAP, one of the 20 priority areas emphasized “enhanced participation of women in agricultural activities and removal of constraints”.

The National Fisheries Policy 1998: specifies its second objective as:

Poverty alleviation--and improving socio economic condition of the fishers

Women not specially mentioned in the objective part but in the aquaculture part it did mention that women in fish culture will be trained – did not mention it as a priority.

The main thrust of the Food Policy, 1988 are :

Price stability Vulnerable Group Development – targeted to the poor and distressed women Vulnerable Group Feeding - targeted to the poor and distressed women

The National Food and Nutrition policy, 1997: widens the scope of food policy and pledges

Food security down to household level Goes beyond cereals, emphasizes homestead agriculture, fruits, vegetables, fish, meat Emphasizes organic agriculture and social equity

The most relevant women policy to the NATP is:

Innovate and use of technology that is women -friendly and reject of technologies if not women- friendly c . The policies versus policy implementation

Bangladesh has Too many policies and too little implementation Also too many laws and too little law enforcement

Laws are necessary but not sufficient to achieve desired objectives. The sufficient condition is social awareness and self motivation. No law or policy compel a landowner to plant trees surrounding homestead land and fish ponds, although government encourages tree plantation by other means – publicity, awareness building. The result is revolutionary success. Humans are guided by own benefits, high price of timber and fruits and not just global interest, pure oxygen. Here, global interest and personal interest converged. But in the case of public forest, personal interests of thief and corrupt forestry employee converged to defeat national interest and global interest. The toughest law to imprison any intruder has failed to protect the so called reserved public forests.

The last example is sanitation. Many Upazilas and Unions achieved 100% sanitation and national sanitation cover improved to 70% from only about 26% in the early 1990s. The participation of local government, Union Parishad deserves highest appreciation in it along with local administration and NGOs. Here again, awareness campaign, rather than ring-slabs was the driving force.

3. NATP Social Safeguards Management Plan- Extension Component

It is therefore important that the NATP makes some special arrangements to avoid any possibility of adverse effects on the poor or benefits not reaching them. Therefore a simple social safeguard management plan is provided below to be applied mainly to the extension component.

Probable Effects and Mitigating Measures

The safeguard management plan will involve identifying probable effects and necessary measures in order to aware and guide the executing agencies to take precautionary measures and corrective actions, should some interventions need them.

Table – 1: Probable Effects and Mitigating Measures Problems and Issues Effects Mitigating Measures Delivery failure: not properly reaching target group 1. Elite capture of CIG. Weaker groups not adequately represented in 1. Continuous field based community PO the CIGs and POs and are deprived of project consultation though NGOs but in benefits. partnership with local government and 2. Sustainability of CBOs CIGs, PO, CBOs institutionally weak, extension agencies. unsustainable and become non-functional after project period. 2. Build up responsible and representative 3. Priority setting Priority areas of the poor and women such as CBOs and help their capacity building,

homestead agriculture, backyard poultry, networking and institutionalization. promoting seed preservation methods and open water fisheries management may not be 3. Targeting: Homogeneous CIGs at the prioritized while commercial aquaculture and grassroots and targets segregated. field crops may get priority on the ground of economy of scale and stronger voice of the 4. Participatory planning at the CIG level. non-poor. 4. Participation and Weaker groups’ right to participate may be ownership either denied or they allowed only token participation and that too reluctantly in view of “condition imposed by donors”. 5. Labor displacement Will require better skilled manpower and Farmer training in new crops, better may reduce employment opportunities of farming practices, operation and unskilled labor- power tiller in place of maintenance of simple equipment etc in bullock plough. partnership with CIG. 6. Tenant displacement Land owners will manage land rather than NGOs may help tenant farmers through sharecropping because of increased microfinance support if necessary. The profitability. Rent will increase and poor selected partner NGOs should have farmers will, at least initially unable to pay ongoing MFI program in the area. higher rent. Displaced sharecroppers be trained and provided MFI support. 7. Marginalization of small New crops, improved farming practices will 1. Skill training and marginal farmers and require increasing investment and the 2. MFI, credit linkage women small/marginal farmer may lack financial 3. Market linkage capital, equipment and skills. 4. Contract farming support

Targeting Special Groups: Women, Landless, Adibasi and Charlanders

Women have special activities and potentials in agriculture, such as backyard poultry, poultry farm, dairy, cattle fattening, duck rearing, homestead pond, home based horticulture, seed preserv ation, post- harvest care, processing and storage. Training and extension service to women deserve careful designing considering special needs.

The disadvantaged social groups require special targeting under various development programs since they are often missed by the normal programs, particularly of the Government Departments mainly because of limited institutional capacity. Agricultural technology traditionally attracts wealthier farmers and at most enterprising medium farmers. It is unlikely to attrac t the landless and poor even in areas with reasonably developed physical infrastructure, like road network. The charlanders, women and adibasis having physical, social and cultural barriers remain isolated from the institutions and are likely to be least served by the development programs, unless specially targeted.

This section highlights some of the major concerns of women, charlanders and adibasis based on a brief literature review supplemented with fieldwork conducted under this study.

Women

Chapter 2 gave an overview of the status of women in Bangladesh and their role in the agriculture sector. It was noted that women’s role in rice and other crop production, particularly in post-harvest and seed preservation remains sizeable and their involvement in fisheries and livestock is expanding. In the past women’s involvement in these sub sectors was limited to very subsistence level and home-based activities like backyard poultry. Now it has expanded to commercial poultry and aquaculture, beyond homestead ponds.

· Capacity Building: (i) This will include training the researchers to identify and respond to women’s technology requirement; (ii) gender sensitive training for all project functionaries at the national, district and Upazila leve ls, including contractual partners; (iii) equipping the NGOs in conducting gender analysis and identifying opportunities for interventions; and (iv) developing a cadre of women agriculture workers (like LEAF of DOF) from among the local farming communities / self -help groups/ NGOs. · Women Mobilization: Special efforts at establishing exclusive women groups and provide opportunity for participation in demonstrations, shouldering responsibility for input supplies, quality control and output marketing. · Technology Support: particularly to the women groups in agriculture technology adoption (both pre- as well as post-harvest) and providing marketing support and facilitating linkages with other agencies/ institutions. · Governance: Women membership/ representation in local bodies/ CBOs shouldering responsibility for designing, approval as well as implementation of research proposals as well as village/ Union/ Upazila Action Plans. b. Adibasi

In Jhinaigati, Sherpur district of Mymensingh region, an adibasi community informed that, the indigenous trees like saal and gazari grew automatically after cutting but new species require continuous plantat ion. More importantly, seasonal short duration crops like ginger, turmeric and simul alu were cultivated under saal trees without affecting long term productivity of the forest. Now, plantation of ekashia, sishu, akashmoni, ucaliptus etc, has substantially reduced the availability of wild fruits, herbs,

and cultivation of seasonal crops under the trees. Therefore horticulture has become essential to the adibasi communities for their survival in the area.

The NATP interventions are unlikely to have adverse effects on the charlanders, because (a) the scope of crop intensification is rather limited in the char area and (b) the char area has a natural advantage of regular flooding that refreshes soil fertility almost every year. Further, flooding limits intensive farming and thus protects soil health. The NATP will however not take any activity that can adversely affect the livelihoods of charlanders. Any activity involving conversion of common property resources like grazing area, community and public ponds to intensive agriculture and aquaculture will be discouraged in all Upazilas covered under the extension component. The project will not take up any activity in the char area unless particular Upazila is covered under the extension component and no activity will be supported without social intermediation through NGOs to make sure that extension interventions are taken as per priorities of the target communities, the charlanders in this case. .

4. Participatory Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation

Table 24: A tentative List of M&E indicators:

Level Indicators Monitoring Monitoring Season -1 Season -2 Frequency Responsibility Input and Number of groups Half yearly UEFT/SAAO Output organized: CIG Half yearly PO Half yearly Number CIG Members Half yearly UEFT/SAAO Male Number CIG Members Half yearly Female Number of member trained Crop season UEFT/SAAO MALE Number of member trained Crop season FEMALE Number of demonstration Crop season UEFT/SAAO plots Local contribution Tk, Yearly UEFT/SAAO Local contribution : Number of members Outcome Demo farm Yield by Crop Yearly UEFT/SAAO Tons/ha Crop area ha by crop Year UEFT/SAAO Crop yield by crop ha Year UECC Backyard poultry Number Yearly UEFT/SAAO of household Average bird per household Goat/sheep number of Yearly UEFT/SAAO household Cattle Number of Yearly UEFT/SAAO household Number of cattle Dairy cow Number of Yearly UEFT/SAAO household Number of cow Average milk/cow Number of layer farms Yearly UEFT/SAAO Number of Layer bird Number of broiler farms Yearly UEFT/SAAO Av broiler/farm Aquaculture pond number Yearly UEFT/SAAO Aquaculture Pond ha Yearly catch/ha