1,156 words

Culture Inclusion

Aquaculture and other fish-related skills help the poorest and most marginalized communities in Bangladesh bolster their incomes, food security and social standing

Cham Moni Tirki became a wife and mother at 15 and a widow at 19, with no prospect of remarrying. As a member of the Oraon tribe in northwestern Bangladesh, she is among the poorest and most socially excluded people in one of Asia’s poorest and most crowded countries. Now 27, she ekes out a living for herself and her 12-year-old son from 0.4 hectares of rice land in the village of Enayetpur Kathalipara.

Tirki’s life recently improved. She started culturing fish in a cage floated in a pond owned by an accommodating neighbor, feeding them rice bran. Two rearing cycles in her first year as a fish farmer provided 5 kilograms of fish for home consumption and earned her US$13 from selling fish and fingerlings.

Tirki is one of nearly 500 new practitioners of cage aquaculture benefitting from a project targeting Adivasis, the umbrella term for the 2 million non-Bengalis in this land of 156 million people. With European Commission funding, the WorldFish Center, Caritas Bangladesh and Bangladesh Fisheries Research Forum launched the Adivasi Fisheries Project in 2007 to teach pond and rice-fish culture to Adivasi smallholders and fish-related business to Adivasi landless. Cage culture is especially attractive to women, as a manageably light bamboo-and-netting cage measuring 1 cubic meter can produce 20 or more kilograms of fingerlings in less than 2 months.

Albina Tudu is the leader of the farmer field school in the nearby village of Aira. She is also the only woman among the 14 family heads listed as school members because she, too, is a widow. A mother of three, she inherited 0.7 hectares of farmland 2 years ago when her husband died of heart disease. Like her neighbors, she had access to two large, communally owned ponds in the village. Otherwise, her only asset was herself. With the launch of the project in Aira, instructors noticed her ready understanding and singled her out for additional technical training, exchange visits to other project villages and leadership development.

The 14 families in her school — 4 of whom own no land but their homesteads — cultured 299 kilograms of fish in 2008, the second year of the project. Augmenting the 14 cages for which materials were supplied by the project, the group invested $102 to build 34 new cages, 2 of which belong to Tudu.

In all, the project lifted the average income of 3,584 participating households from $700 in 2007 to $854 in 2008. It did so by increasing the heretofore tiny contribution of fish to household incomes by a factor of three for smallholders and eight for the landless. More income and fish for home consumption improved participating Adivasi households’ food security, shortening their average food-deficit period from 1.8 months in 2007 to 1.2 months in 2008. A dozen related studies on socio-cultural and technical issues and extension delivery mechanisms aim to further enhance the benefits of aquaculture for Adivasi households.

“We intervene according to people’s assets,” explains Mahadi Hasan, a research assistant. “We teach pond culture to those with ponds, rice-fish culture to those with paddies, and trading and cage culture to the landless.”

Anil Mahato is landless. He used to live by farm labor, earning a dollar and a meal for a day’s work — when he could find it. Today, his main business is retailing live eels door to door 2-3 days a week. Fish traders with the project typically make $3-4 per working day, earning on average $220 per year from the activity.

“This is completely new,” reports Benoy Kumar Barman, the project leader. “These people never before did any sort of business. Initially, they had trouble keeping accounts, but they learned. And, when other traders resisted their entry, they took it to the market committee and established their rights.”

The ethnic Singh residents of Bimnagar Singhpara lost their land in the 1970s. With no education then and a reputation as hard drinkers, they sold their land to neighboring Muslims and Hindus after failing to manage the inputs required by modern varieties of staple grains. Like Anil Mahato, the eel seller from the nearby village of Birnagar Bashpara, they lived by laboring in others’ fields, growing rice, maize, sugarcane and wheat.

Today, the eight men in the netting team formed in Bimnagar Singhpara with assistance from the project still do agricultural labor. But they also harvest fish for 18 regular fish-farming clients and occasionally for others, earning new income and respect. Team members use their bicycle rickshaw vans to transport the fish to the wholesale market, where they collect 10-15% of the selling price as their fee. Each earned $60 profit in 2008, which was only half of what they earned doing agricultural labor but in much less than half of the time.

Team member Naresh Singh was able to buy a well pump and a secondhand bicycle. Bishawnath Singh bought a piglet and got medical treatment to cure his daughter of pneumonia, a disease that annually kills 2 million children worldwide. The team members expect their individual netting income to rise to $73 in 2009, while they jointly save 20% of the team’s income toward replacing their two nets.

A neighbor and namesake of the eel trader, Anil Mahato is a rice farmer with 0.5 hectares who improved his income by 50% in 1 year by stocking a paddy with 5 kilograms of tilapia and common carp fry. He stopped applying pesticides and reduced his use of fertilizer, cutting his rice input costs by half without affecting his rice yield. This year he expects to double his fish yield to 30 kilograms and planted pumpkin and bitter gourd to grow on bamboo trellises and provide shade to the fish refuges around the edge of the paddy.

Back in Enayetpur Kathalipara, where Cham Moni Tirki tends her single cage and rice plot, Sudhir Tigga is a big wheel by local standards. In 2008, he earned $595 from pond aquaculture of fingerlings and food fish on an investment of $218, albeit with a $73 decline in rice income because of reduced area. He also repairs water pumps and rents out his 75-meter-long net when the project-standard 50-meter net is too short. With higher income from fish since the start of the project, he has stopped migrating to Dhaka to pedal a rickshaw for 2-3 months at a stretch.

“I’m happy to stay here now and manage my father’s farm,” he says.

In her third cage cycle, Cham has consumed 3 kilograms of fish and still has 4 kilograms of fingerlings in the cage. The season for fingerlings has passed, but the fish have grown large enough to sell for food. Barman, the WorldFish project leader, suggests that she do that, but she replies that she will keep them for eating and sharing, especially when entertaining relatives.

“We think of the project as boosting production and improving incomes and food security,” comments Barman. “But it’s also important for people’s social standing.”

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