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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

Sam L. J. Page
CABI Europe-UK, Bakeham Lane, Egham, Surrey TW20 9TY, UK

Md Elahi Baksh
Wheat Research Centre, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Joydepur, Bangladesh

Etienne Duveiller
CIMMYT South Asia, Kathmandu, Nepal

Stephen R. Waddington
S. R. Waddington CIMMYT Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh

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

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

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.

Keywords: Bangladesh, Wheat, Poverty alleviation, Food insecure farmers, Technology, Dissemination

Location:

Start Date:

End Date:

Program Area: Socio-economic and Policy

Non-commodity: Adoption of technology, Livelihood

Objectives:

In order to disseminate beneficial technologies more widely and reach the poorest farmers in particular, it is necessary to reduce the risks associated with technology adoption. The best way of doing this is to enable risk-averse farming families to generate income by providing a service which is linked to the adoption and spread of a particular new technology. This type of intervention normally requires injections of human capital, in the form of training, and financial capital, in the form of micro-credit, from specialist NGOs.

Methodology:

Targeting the poorest farmers The adoption of new technologies, including seed of new varieties, could threaten the livelihoods (as measured through household food security and financial income) of resource-poor farming families. Only those families with sufficient land or earnings to guarantee food security throughout the year can take this risk. To target the poorest groups with our research, farming families were categorised according to their ability to take risk: Landless/food insecure, ultra-poor family Must rent land to grow food or do paid labour to buy food and pay for other necessities. Cannot take any risks. Marginal/food insecure farming family Has insufficient land to achieve household food security. Regular shortages of food and cash. Must do labour to buy additional food, inputs and other basic necessities. Can enter a downward spiral into extreme poverty very easily. Cannot take any risks. Subsistence/self-sufficient farming family Has sufficient land to meet basic food needs under normal conditions. May need to do labour to pay for inputs and other necessities (including school fees). Remains vulnerable to economic and environmental shocks. Is risk averse. Food surplus farming family Has sufficient land to guarantee household food security on a regular basis. Able to produce surplus grain and cash crops for sale to buy inputs, send children to school and accumulate ‘middle class’ assets, e.g. bicycle, TV, electric fan. Able to take risk. According to this classification, only ‘subsistence’ and ‘food surplus’ farmers are able to take risk and therefore it is these farmers who are most likely to adopt new technologies In order to target the poorest, risk-prone, marginal and landless farming families it was necessary to classify them according to their ability to be food secure. The method used for this process involved calculating the Rice Self Sufficiency Index (RSSI) for each household, since these families depend on rice for their food security. This was based on their landholding (i.e. the area of land that they own), number and ages of dependents and expected yield of unprocessed, rice paddy, according to the following formula (modified from Page and Chonyera 1994). The annual rice paddy requirement of each household is calculated according the mean, minimum, recommended daily energy intakes for adults, adolescents over 10 years and children under 10 years.4 This is 2,500 kcals, equivalent to 365 kg of (unprocessed) paddy rice per year5 for an active adult, 2,000 kcal, equivalent to 274 kg of paddy rice per year for an adolescent 10–18 years and 1,500 kcal, equivalent to 183 kg/year for a child under 10 years. The farmer’s own yield data in terms of kilograms of paddy per hectare is used to calculate the RSSI for his household. The Rice Self Sufficiency Index (RSSI) for landless farmers will normally be zero, while the RSSI for marginal farmers will always be less than 100%. For the purposes of this research, the RSSI for subsistence farmers was set at between 100% and 200%, while farming families who had RSSIs of more than 200% were classified as food surplus/ cash-cropping farmers. This poverty assessment method is both quick and accurate to use in the field since it requires only five simple statistics: the numbers of adults, adolescents aged 10–18 years and children aged <10 years in the household, the landholding and the most recent rice paddy yield per unit area. These can easily be re-called by farmers.

Source of Information: Food Sec. (2009) 1:99–109

Article Link (Online Journal): DOI 10.1007/s12571-008-0006-7

Funding Source:

Budget:

Total Budget (Tk.) :

Achievement/Findings:

This work has shown that a bottom up approach can also accelerate the adoption of new technologies by very poor people and, at the same time, make a significant impact on their livelihoods. By developing a strategy for wheat seed production based on access to 0.08 ha plots, input costs were kept low and risk was minimised. This led to more than 50% of the families earning more than half of the income required to reach the local poverty line. Farming families that were trained in 2004 have since applied their knowledge on seed selection and storage to other crops such as rice and pulses, with some farmers investing the profits they had earned from wheat seed production in the hiring or purchase of more land and have established seed trading and other agroservice provision enterprises see Box 1. Similar targeted dissemination strategies could be used to accelerate the uptake of many other valuable technologies in the South Asia rice–wheat farming system and alleviate poverty across the Eastern Gangetic Plain (Conroy and Sutherland 2004). These could involve the provision of training and small-scale loans to enable landless and marginal farmers to become service providers and thus benefit from machines such as threshers, irrigation pumps and power tillers. Such ‘win–win’ strategies, are characterised by improved access to new technologies for poor (food insecure, risk averse) farming families as well as for rich (food surplus) farming families, but with the rich farmers paying for the service rather than being the exclusive beneficiaries of a top-down technology transfer system. The process of empowering poor farmers as seed traders was assisted by Bangladesh’s progressive seed laws which uphold farmers’ rights by allowing them to sell ‘truthfully labelled’ seed. This approach could be expanded to other crops, particularly other self pollinating crops, where seed production and marketing is relatively simple, e.g. various grain legumes/pulses and some vegetables, to gain more income while providing a useful product and service to other farmers.

Knowledge Management: Journal