Arjen De Vos
The Salt Doctors Den Burg, The Netherlands
Andrés Parra González
Department of Irrigation Centro de Edafología y Biología Aplicada del Segura (CSIC) University of Murcia, Espinardo Espinardo, Spain
Bas Bruning
The Salt Doctors Den Burg, The Netherlands
Salt-affected area, Empowered, Coastal area, Improve their yields, Livelihoods
Risk Management in Agriculture
Soil salinity, Water salinity
The Salt Solution project was funded by the Dutch Postcode Lottery and implemented by a consortium led by the ICCO Group BV; ICCO is a leading non-governmental organization with headquarters in the Netherlands and regional offices in several countries, such as Bangladesh. Salt Farm Texel (specializing in saline agriculture in the Netherlands), CODEC (a Community Development Centre from Bangladesh), Acacia Water (specializing in water in the Netherlands) and Lal Teer Seed (a seed company from Bangladesh) were also part of the consortium. The Salt Solution project was an innovative climate-smart agriculture-based project and throughout its 3-year duration, it trained 5,000 farmers directly on saline agriculture in four coastal districts (Khulna, Bagerhat, Barguna and Patuakhali). This indirectly benefited 25,000 household members and some aspects of the project continue to this day, increasing the number of people reached. The project had four main outputs: • salt-tolerant crop production on salt-affected land • increased nutritious food consumption • increased participation and decision-making by women in crop production and water management • creation of a network of farmers, extension officers, policymakers and scientists to create solutions aimed at adapting to salinity The project involved government personnel with the project intervention designed to sensitize them towards the intended project production technologies of salt-tolerant crop varieties. Key interventions of the project were: setting up a field station and the development of best practices, demonstration and promotion, scaling up, linking with input suppliers and with markets for the sale of produce, research, water management and the influencing of government policies. The project aimed to ensure that farmers in the salt-affected area in coastal Bangladesh were empowered to improve their yields and livelihoods. At present, the majority of the farmers in the coastal area grows only one crop per year commercially (rice during the monsoon season); while in the north of the country, three crop cycles per year are standard. By making use of salt-tolerant crops and smart soil and water management, it became possible to introduce two additional crop cycles per year to the coastal area. By growing different high-yielding, nutritious crops with good market value, smallholder farmers were able to adapt to the increasing salinities and improve their livelihoods, so that ultimately migration out of the area could be stopped. However, before this climate-smart, a resilient form of agriculture could be introduced on a large scale, several limiting factors had to be addressed. Part of the approach of the project is summarized. First of all, the project should be embedded at an institutional level. Extension programs have to be developed as well as “best practices” for crop cultivation that includes crop, soil and water management and an agro-service for farmers need to be established to assist farmers upon request. Salt Farm Texel has tested the yield potential of several salt-tolerant vegetable crops and crop varieties (including potato, cabbage, cauliflower, carrot, beetroot and kohlrabi) at the Salt Farm Texel Research and Training Centre in the Netherlands (for crop species and varieties see Bruning et al. 2015; de Vos et al. 2016). Given the evidence from these field experiments, Salt Farm Texel had begun to pilot the feasibility of introducing some varieties into the product portfolios of lead farmers in coastal Bangladesh. A Saline Agriculture Research and Training Centre (referred to as the Training Centre in the rest of this chapter) has been set up in coastal Bangladesh in collaboration with Lal Teer Seeds, as part of the ongoing project. At the start, the project focused on the validation of the crop performance under local conditions and the development of the “best practices” for cultivation under saline conditions in coastal Bangladesh during the dry seasons. Soil salinity was closely monitored at the Training Center and at an additional 50 different farms across the whole project. Lead farmers and, subsequently, the farmers’ groups were trained in determining the salinity of their soil using various methods, as well as the salinity of the irrigation water. Results of these measurements were converted to the international standard of ECe values to be able to link crop performance to soil salinity values. The best way to convince a farmer to change their way of farming is by showing the financial return on investment. For this reason, special attention was focused on farm business models, also aimed at Shifting traditional agriculture to a commercial basis. Close monitoring took place by ICCO and CODEC, collecting data of the different crops at a minimum of 30 different farms per crop.
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