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Putting the poorest farmers in control of disseminating improved wheat seed: a strategy to accelerate technology adoption and alleviate poverty in Bangladesh

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Abstract

This paper reports on a ‘bottom-up’ system of wheat seed technology transfer that was piloted in north–west Bangladesh with 45 mainly marginal (food insecure) farming families during the 2004–2005 wheat season, then scaled out to a further 545 mainly marginal, farming families during the 2006–2007 season. The system was devised following a survey which indicated that such farmers can obtain a 52% increase in wheat grain yield and extra income by switching from the old Kanchan variety to the newer, heat and disease-tolerant Shatabdi variety. The bottom-up wheat seed dissemination system involved the creation of an enabling environment which allowed poor and ultra-poor farmers to store and sell selected seed of recently-released wheat varieties that they produced in 20 decimal (0.08 ha) plots. During the pilot phase of the project in 2005, farmers produced 7, 976 kg of grain and more than 50% of this was selected as high quality seed, stored during the monsoon season and marketed to other farmers just prior to the following wheat season. This seed was sold at Tk25–30/kg and realised profits averaging Tk3,002 (€38.49; exchange rate was 78:1 in October 2005) per household. In 2007, the seed price had risen to Tk33–50/kg and a larger group of farmers produced, stored and marketed 168,800 kg of high quality wheat seed, which realised profits averaging Tk5,080, equivalent to €51 (exchange rate was 99.6:1 in October 2007), per household. This bottom up seed production and dissemination system met the wheat seed requirements of more than 1,400 neighbouring farmers in areas with a deficit of wheat seed for planting, and enabled poor and ultra-poor farmers to earn more than 50% of the income they needed to cross the local poverty line.

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Notes

  1. CM 98472 pedigree (Maringa/Buckbuck//Bolillo/Pavon/3/Punjab81).

  2. Part of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI).

  3. Bangladesh’s poverty line varies according to the ‘cost of basic needs’ such as food and other essential items (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and World Bank Poverty Assessment, 2002). Tk9,176 was calculated as being the ‘cost of basic needs’ in October 2007 by Dipak Kumar Ghosh of PROSHIKA.

  4. According to FAO/WHO/UN human daily energy requirements vary as follows: 2,780kcal for a male subsistence farmer; 2,235kcal for a rural woman in a developing country (2,585–2,977kcal during pregnancy and lactation); 1,140kcal for girls aged 1–10years; 1,200–2,150kcal for boys aged 1–10years; 2,300–2,340kcal for adolescent girls aged 10–18years and 2,500–3,100kcal for adolescent boys aged 10–18years (FAO 1985).

  5. Unprocessed rice contains 360kcal/100g (Saunders and Betschart 1979).

  6. Funded by DfID UK: see Page et al. 2006.

  7. The national seed supplier, Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC) is only able to provide 15–20% of the country’s wheat seed requirements.

  8. In 1997 the government signed the national seed act which allows farmers to sell so-called ‘truthfully labelled’ seed as long as they take legal responsibility for its quality (Danielsen et al. 2005). As a result hundreds of farming families have been linked with suppliers of foundation seed and trained to produce good quality rice seed in several areas of Bangladesh by the Grameen Krishi Foundation (Van Mele et al. 2005) and the Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service (RDRS) (Samsuzzaman and Van Mele 2005). In some cases, these farmers have organised themselves into seed-selling groups to maximise profits. Similar practices are possible with wheat seed production and marketing by small farmers in Bangladesh. The project we describe here was developed to help very poor farmers take advantage of the opportunities provided by this innovative policy.

  9. Funded by DFID UK, see Page et al.( 2006).

  10. This involves training families as wheat-producing units in recognition of the fact that all immediate family members participate in the production cycle and are affected by production decisions and results. Husband and wife, or mother and eldest son most commonly attend. Modesty is preserved by encouraging husbands and wives to sit together and adjacent to a member of the same sex. This arrangement also promotes the sharing of child care during training sessions, see Fig. 1. Women are also encouraged to participate in any field work. The methodologies were specifically designed by the WRC to be participatory, gender unbiased, and comprehensible for all educational levels. Formal classroom settings and teaching styles are discouraged. Instead, training rooms are arranged with semicircular seating to encourage maximum interaction and informal training methodologies are advocated. Evaluations have recorded 100 per cent comprehension of key messages, and nearly all wheat recommendations had a tested adoption rate of 90% to 100% (Meisner et al. 2003).

  11. Funded by Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation.

  12. First United Nations Millennium Development Goal.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CABI Europe-UK, Bakeham Lane, Egham, Surrey, TW20 9TY, UK

    Sam L. J. Page

  2. Wheat Research Centre, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Joydepur, Bangladesh

    Md Elahi Baksh

  3. CIMMYT South Asia, Kathmandu, Nepal

    Etienne Duveiller

  4. CIMMYT Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh

    Stephen R. Waddington

  5. CIMMYT, Global Wheat Program, Apdo Postal 6-641, 06600, Mexico DF, Mexico

    Etienne Duveiller

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  1. Sam L. J. Page
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  2. Md Elahi Baksh
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  4. Stephen R. Waddington
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Correspondence to Sam L. J. Page.

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Page, S.L.J., Baksh, M.E., Duveiller, E. et al. Putting the poorest farmers in control of disseminating improved wheat seed: a strategy to accelerate technology adoption and alleviate poverty in Bangladesh. Food Sec. 1, 99–109 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-008-0006-7

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