Written by: Mahanambrota Das and Mustafa Bakuluzzaman (Shushilan)

“I must participate in the earth cutting of the Hafamari canal along with men. I also need fresh water for my agriculture field.” said a woman during inauguration

It was in the midday sun on the 28^th February, 2018. The sun was on top of the head and was burning the host community with wrath. But, ignoring the fire of the sun, about 200 men and women of the Sekendarkhali village were excitedly waiting at the middle of the village for their chief guest and the invitees. It was a decorated place with colourful cloth by the side of the dried canal to celebrate the launching ceremony of the long desired canal re-excavation.

This was the first time for this community that men and women were seated together at the equal level during the meeting, breaking the barriers of conservativism and the social norms of the village.  71 women attended, most of them wore veils and their faces were covered with the black long garments. They were smilingly discussing with each other family matters, fresh water and canal re-excavation issues.

Finally, with the great enthusiasm from the community, the Assistant District Commissioner (ADC)-Revenue of Barguna District inaugurated the canal re-excavation activities by cutting red ribbon.

The successful  programme launching was made possible due to the great enthusiasm of the community and with the worthy collaboration of the local government, local administration, private sector, Universities and NGOs. The community not only had organized such this great event, but also they had also contributed greatly to the scheme with finances and in-kind. The lion portion about 48% of the scheme’s expenses were contributed by the community followed by Australian Research Institutes 44% and the Union Parishad (local government) about 8%.

The local SIAGI team with the support of Australian Research Institutes helped the community to bring the canal into fruition. Using ethical community engagement the local SIAGI team motivated and created the cohesiveness of the community through in-kind support, empathy, information and collaboration, instead of financial and material support. The local SIAGI team has built trust and confidence of the village people so that they are empowered to undertake this kind of initiative through community level aspiration and vision creation around village priorities, formal and informal interactions and inter-relationship building between the community, private sector and the government.

The inauguration is merely the start of journey for the community in implement their vision and creating the changes they wish to see. Shushilan and the SIAGI team will continue to support and empower the village members to achieve their goals.

Written by: Mahanambrota Das and Milon Kumar Paul (Shushilan)

“Today my dream is going to accomplish. Pain is nothing if I get fresh water for my agriculture, livestock and household. I feel happy when I see crops in the field and food in the house” said a woman of Sekendarkhali village, celebrating the inauguration of the canal re-excavation works.

Polders in Southwest Bangladesh contain many canals that connect the fields to the rivers. Water entry to the polder to irrigate and exit of flood water to drain the polder is managed through sluice gates located in the dykes surrounding the polders. Such canals are also a feature of Sekendarkhali village (located in Barguna district). However, many years of mismanagement and lack of maintenance have led to siltation and a loss of canal function. Yet, these canals could also be storing water for irrigation in the Rabi season. Villagers report that now fields in Sekendarkhali remain fallow in Rabi and Kharif-1 season because of loss of the canal to act as a fresh water reservoir, lack of unity and misconceptions among local community (villagers). Besides, major relief activities after cyclone Sidr in 2007 struck Sekendarkhali have changed the people’s behavior to becoming receivers of donations, lethargic or inactive.

In order to address the problem, the villagers took a collective action approach. With initial support by Shushilan through the SIAGI project, they formed a Water and Silt Management Committee (WSMC) to build trust and harmony amongst each other. A constitution was developed to operate the WSMC. This committee advocated and negotiated with local government institutions, government officials and the wider village community to help the re-excavation activities of canal. They also created a fund of USD 8,750 and obtained a Non Objection Certificate (NOC) from the local administration to collectively utilize the natural resources (canal’s water and fishes).

An agreement was signed between the Union Parishad (lowest level local government Institution of Bangladesh), the NGO Shushilan and the WSMC to undertake the re-excavation activities with the goal of storing fresh water for agriculture interventions round the year through motivating the local community to contribute financially and physically.

The community has started re-excavating the canal over a length of 1227 m, 9.15 m of width and 1.37 m of depth for storing about 15 ML of fresh water. This can potentially service about 180 hectares of agriculture lands under Rabi crops cultivation. A monitoring committee has been formed by involving the local government officials, local community, academics, researchers and representatives of NGOs to look after the day-to-day activities. Total cost of the re-excavation activities is expected to be BDT 1,256,760, equivalent to USD 15,709.

The community has demonstrated their potential and ownership to utilize the natural resources for their betterment by reducing harmony gaps. Successful implementation of the canal’s re-excavation was due to the engagement of the local community, local administration, Shushilan and Bangladesh and Australian research institutions. This is helping the community receive social and technical support. Engagement of Union Parishad and local administration helped in managing local conflicts and obtaining agreement on the canal management and water sharing activities afterwards.

Written by: Mahanambrota Das and Sumana Sarah Bhuiyan

“At first, my husband was disagreed to this type of farming system. He criticized us after hearing about the land shaping. Then, I and my daughter-in-law tried to make him understand day after day. Finally, we were succeeded by the help of sons. Now, all of my family members are happy to enjoy the benefits of the farm.” said both woman farmer and her daughter-in-law during a farm visit at Khatail

 “Now, we do not buy any vegetable, except oil, salt and some spices from market. Rather, I sale vegetables BDT. 200-500 daily. Traders come to my house to buy my vegetables.” said the woman farmer

“My family eat more vegetables than the past. These are organic vegetables and chemical free. These are more delicious.” said daughter-in-law of the woman farmer

Like many coastal villages in Bangladesh, Khatail village in the Khulna district is highly affected by salinity throughout the year except in the monsoon season when rainfall reduces the soil salinity. Almost all farmers of this village are directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture. Traditionally, the farmers plough their land in the Baishakh (April-May) or Joisto (May-June) and harvest the monsoon season crop in the Poush (December-January). For the rest of the year the land mostly remains fallow. In the past a few farmers tried to cultivate other crops such as sunflower, lentils, khesari dal and sesame in the dry season but failed to get a good harvest due to a lack of fresh water and open livestock rearing by the community. The risks of investment are too high for poor landless and marginal farmers. With limited crop production, unemployment reportedly increases, many men must seasonally migrate to different districts of Bangladesh to get work as agriculture laborers. In this lean period, women, in absence of male partners, must manage the households alone. They and their families also face critical food insecurity.

Shushilan, an eco-sensitive non-government organization, has motivated and technically assisted the farming community to change the agricultural landscape of this saline affected village, with the support of SIAGI project. This has been achieved through formal and informal interactions with community where empathy and respect for community is first and foremost. One activity has been supporting some women managed households to implement integrated farming in the village. The women who chose to try this system have excavated a ditch (about 4 feet deep) and used the excavated soil to create a raised dyke around some flat land. The ditch retains monsoon rainwater year round, which is used to support integrated farming of crops, vegetables and fishes. The dyke is raised to prevent both salinity intrusion and monsoon flooding. The women fenced the farm to protect the crops from open livestock rearing.

Although the land size of the integrated farming managed by women farmers is small (8-20 decimals or about 325-810 m²) the benefits to date have been fantastic. The women have used the flat land for rice or vegetables and the raised dyke to grow vegetables such as spinach, okra, eggplant, tomato, bean, gourd, bitter gourd, chili, amaranth, papaya etc. The ditch has been used for fish culture such as carp, rui (lebeo ruhita), tilapia and golda prawn (Macrobarachium Rosenbergi). Some women also raise ducks and hens in the free space of their farm.

Some of the women leading the transition to integrated farming systems have reported a positive change in the motivation of the woman group members and their families. They say that the system has helped to increase food security and family earnings, and added more nutritious vegetables to their diets than they have had in past years. It has also increased the ability of vulnerable farming households to adapt to and manage salinity intrusion and monsoon flooding. In seeing these benefits, some women have this Robi season extended the integrated farming system for their vegetables farming.

Note: According to Agricultural Census of Bangladesh (2016) landless is defined as those households who possess up to one half of an acre of non-farm holdings. Marginal farming households are those who own 0.05 to 0.49 acre of farm holdings.

The second of a series of roundtable meetings on Public Private Partnerships (PPP) organised by YES BANK was held on the 22^nd February 2017 at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. These workshops are being held as part of the ACIAR-funded project on Promoting socially inclusive and sustainable agricultural intensification in West Bengal and Bangladesh, and aim to provide a platform that brings together on-ground institutions and market professionals to discuss challenges to effective PPP and identify ways to overcome these barriers. There were over 20 participants at the recent workshop representing a broad range of private and public stakeholders and research institutes, including Shri Jagdamba Samiti, National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Limited (NCDEX), Reliance Foundation, Indian Council of Food & Agriculture, ACIAR, Innovative Change Collaborative (ICCo), ITC, Reserve Bank of India, Tata Cornell Agriculture & Nutrition Initiative, CDHI, and Annamrit Foundation.

It is recognised that there are inadequate linkages between smallholder farmers and the markets required to sustain their economic viability. One key challenge is to bridge the disconnect between the development organisations and institutions working at the grassroots and the commercially driven market institutions. The focus of this second workshop was to discuss these ‘linkage’ and ‘institutionalisation’ issues. The roundtable discussion opened up a wide span of ideas and perspectives from the broad range of participants and their experiences. Some of the key points that emerged include:

• The need for a shift in the perception of smallholder farmers, including their own perspectives and that of the private and public institutions. The mindset of all must change from its focus on staples to a broad diversity of agriculture. New and growing food value chains provide an opportunity for smallholder farmers, however there are constraints that hinder this opportunity including poor market infrastructure for non-staples, financial systems designed for rice and wheat only, and policies that are also centred on staples.
• New skill sets and capacities are needed by farmers. Collectives, or Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), need to be well managed to ensure they transition into successful business enterprises. Rather than making the role of an NGO central to the collective, there must be members with the right skills to ensure the group self-sustains in the long-term even after the NGO leaves. NGOs and the public (and possibly private) sector can be a major conduit for this skill development and extension.
• Bottom-up approach to agricultural intensification. There is no cookie-cutter approach to developing a successful farming enterprise. It is imperative that farmers are supported to make their own choices to ensure long-term sustainable agriculture and self-reliance. This entails providing farmers with the capacity to make, for example, crop choices based on market information and their local conditions.
• Scale-neutral technologies to help bridge the gap. While collectives provide the scaling up needed to compete in certain markets, scale-neutral technologies, particularly IT-related led (e.g. e-National Agri Market) are another opportunity for smallholder farmers to reach new markets. Digitization may also help in the delivery of subsidies and other policy mechanisms.

Transforming marginal and smallholder farmers to profitable farming businesses requires a shift in the perceptions and policies of both public and private institutions including NGOs, and building the capacity of farmers in skills to meet market needs. Through this discussion we have started to identify a number of potential mechanisms and opportunities to build and strengthen the linkages between farmers and markets. There has been great interest from the participants to continue this conversation through further workshops, and to build a framework that can be implemented to support these rural communities.

An account of the SIAGI half-yearly progress review workshop, by Chiranjeevi Tallapragada (LNRMI) and Wendy Merritt (ANU)

The SIAGI team met for the project’s first six monthly review on 3-5 October 2016 in the IIT Salt Lake guesthouse in Kolkata. The participants could not have imagined that the three days would lead to so much positive change.

The workshop sessions started with partner presentations on farmer household typologies. There are many ways to develop typologies, the pros and cons of which were discussed in depth. Despite a forecast of winds of change from the project leader, the sessions moved briskly through the value chain analysis and public-private partnerships. Whilst the project team has narrowed down what value chains we may look at, it was recognised that we need to do more engagement with the target communities and further understand the context of our case study regions before selecting the crop or aquaculture systems. The winds started blowing from the post-lunch sessions onwards but the extent of the storm was not yet visible.

The storm crossed the coast on the second day with discussions on the ethics of community engagement. Most participatory processes don’t treat communities with respect and facilitators (or researchers) instead use participation to justify what they recommend should be done for the good of communities. Truly ethical community engagement recognises the ability of the communities to know what is good for them and to be the keystone for making positive change. The role of the facilitator is to help make connections, provide support and let the community determine outcomes. While a project may stimulate change, the project timelines are for the research processes but not for the communities who are on a continuous journey.

There was a consensus that the SIAGI team needs to ethically engage with the communities in the case studies. However, the eye of the storm centred on what the ethics of engagement meant to each person in the room, what could be its objectives, what rules to follow while engaging, what processes need to be adopted, how to balance the engagement needs of project components and who in the team needed to be involved at what point in time. The role of facilitators, skills that would be needed and the outputs that may be derived and the potential risks or limitations were some of the issues that we encountered. It was apparent we needed to step back and re-design our strategy for on-going engagement with the communities. A fantastic although challenging outcome!

After the ethics discussions subsided, the team was provided with an overview of the findings from the review into institutional arrangements and policy settings relevant to our project aims in coastal areas of Bangladesh and West Bengal. The day concluded with some operational discussions. That evening we walked from the guesthouse to have a lovely dinner at a local restaurant – lovely food and great company!

The third day began with a presentation on bio-economic modelling for agricultural intensification, work that offers multiple opportunities for community engagement. Farmers are critical to inform the objectives of the modelling and capture the resources available to them and the constraints they face. The team felt that the process of engaging with farmers to build the model was a concrete example of the ethical community engagement processes previously discussed. The session on integrated modelling allowed the team to consider the overall picture of how each project activity fits together and reflect on the substantial conceptual understanding of that the team has already developed.

The workshop concluded with a discussion about the range of stakeholders we may need to engage with, and monitoring and evaluation. The team noted the continual process of identifying stakeholders and the need to start early. Monitoring and evaluation will need to be intertwined with the re-designed community engagement process.

Throughout the whole workshop there was an overall excitement in making new connections and bonding through mutual respect. Many participants stated that the joint India-Bangladesh-Australia meeting was how they wanted meetings to occur in the future. All the thought-provoking and challenging discussions were held without our captain losing control or direction of the ship. The project in terms of its maturity cruised several nautical miles into clearer skies, towards an exciting vision of a new dawn for participatory development and research.

Written by: Dr Hasneen Jahan, BAU

The Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU) team is working on many activities for its research under the SIAGI project. To set up the priority works and the execution process, the team has already sat for 18 discussion meetings where all the team members, led by Professor Dr M Serajul Islam, contributed to plan and organise the project activities.

The BAU team visited Polder 31 of Dacope Upazila of Khulna district to get an overall socioeconomic and environmental conception of the study area as well as to document the agricultural practices under different farming systems in that area. The team used Focus Group Discussion (FGD) and a Transect Walk to obtain the required information. FGD was conducted both for men and women groups.

Necessary secondary data of Dacope Upazila has also been collected. After returning back from the study area, the team prepared a field report.

The BAU team has also contributed to developing the conceptual framework of livelihood and value chain analysis with other teams within the SIAGI project. It has also working on finalizing the PRA (RRA) check list for livelihood study. BAU team leader Prof. Dr. M. Serajul Islam has divided the BAU team into three sub-groups to work on value chain (Dr. Mohammed Ismail Hossain and Md. Mojammel Haque), modelling (Dr. Md. Akhtaruzzaman Khan and Dr. Hasneen Jahan) and socio-economic and livelihood (Dr. Muhammad Obaidul Islam and Dr. Md. Wakilur Rahman) to accomplish the works in a more constructive manner.

The BAU team has made significant progress on engaging MS and PhD students in the project who will work under this project to fulfil the research requirements of their degree. Three MS students and one PhD student have been selected to date. The students have been admitted to the Department of Agricultural Economics (1 PhD student), Department of Agribusiness and Marketing (1 MS student), Department of Agricultural Finance (1 MS student) and Department of Rural Sociology (1 MS student) following the admission criteria of Bangladesh Agricultural University. In the meantime they have presented their research proposals in front of BAU team and after incorporating the comments of BAU team members they have finalized their proposals.

Written by: Lilly Lim-Camacho (CSIRO), MD Ismail Hossain (BAU), and Mahanambrota Dash (Shushilan)

The SIAGI value chain team recently held a value chain analysis training workshop, hosted by CDHI at their Jalpaiguri office, on 23-26 August 2016. All partner organisations were represented, giving us a great opportunity to build on the combined expertise across the SIAGI team.

The activity kicked off with a welcome dinner and briefing, followed by a day out visiting field sites in Dhaloguri and Uttar Chakowakheti, and a local farmers market at Mainaguri Road. It was the first visit to Jalpaiguri by our colleagues from Bangladesh, enabling great learning against the different case study contexts.

Days 2 and 3 focused on module-based training, covering the following topics:

• Principles of value chain analysis, by Lilly (CSIRO) and Ismail (BAU)
• Value chain and social inclusion perspectives, by Mahanam and Sakul (both Shushilan), Mojammel (BAU), Subrata and Joy (both CDHI), Michaela (CSIRO), and Alak (PRADAN)
• Econometrics, by Pulak and Bhagirath (both IIT)
• Public private partnerships and entrepreneurship, by Tushar (YesBank)

The way the sessions were developed and run showed we could overcome the tyrannies of distance and conflicting workloads: Michaela led the development of the inclusion module, even if she wasn’t able to attend the workshop. Tushar ran his module online from Delhi – with a recorded presentation (25:38) while he was on Skype for questions and discussions. (So we had tech and IT capacity building as well!)

In addition to the field visit, the training sessions were contextualised by a significant stakeholder discussion session where government and farming stakeholders were invited to share their thoughts on issues surrounding inclusion in value chains. It was evident that there was a lack of communication between the two stakeholder groups, and we had great moment of achievement when one government stakeholder decided to continue farmer discussions immediately after the session!

Lots of discussion, learning, design and planning occurred throughout the workshop. Here are videos of Ismail (1:09) and Mahanam (4:30) sharing their thoughts on the field visit and workshop.

The value chain workshop achieved a lot. We’re not only proud of having achieved the goals we had set; we’re also proud to continue building friendships along the way.