Pabna's changed farming traditions

In Pabna's Ishwardi, winter, by tradition, means beans. Every year in Muladuli village, hundreds of bighas of land are dedicated to bean cultivation. Yet despite the constancy of the crop, traditions in farming across Bangladesh have changed significantly and Muladuli's bean farming is no exception.

Local farmer Babu, popularly called 'Bean Babu' in reference to his family's traditional occupation, used to grow beans on 35 bighas of land, a substantial holding. But he doesn't work in the fields anymore.

“I started some other businesses with bean profits,” he says, “For example I'm a shareholder in a local health clinic.”

Like many farming families across the country who used to till their own land, hiring day labourers as required, nowadays Bean Babu leases his fields to sharecroppers instead.

“I'm too busy to work in the field now,” Babu explains, “and the cost of day labour has risen to beyond production costs.”

“Nearly all the farmers in this region,” says a local carrying vegetables on his way to the pre-winter market, “have leased the lands they farm from the landowner.”

A few years ago, Hamidur Rahman Sarder worked as a labourer on Babu's land. Nowadays he has leased a sizeable area to cultivate beans on his own.

“Five years ago, I started with a one-bigha lease,” he says, “and I made good profits. As Babu moved away from farming I was able to lease more land from him. I have a ten-bigha lease this year.”

Sarder has also managed to buy 15 kathas of land with his bean profits. He has successfully managed his family including education expenses for his children. His elder daughter Ratri achieved a GPA 5 in her Primary School Certificate this year. “In five years I earned about fifteen lacs taka,” he says with pride.

It's become a familiar story. “I've leased the land I cultivate,” says another farmer. “I don't own land yet but I'm saving for it.” Another farmer nearby says with her savings from leased-land production she's bought her first small plot.

Yet with increased sharecropping have arrived new challenges. According to Rumana Parveen of the agriculture extension department, sharecroppers are less concerned with land care, seeking instead to maximise short-term profits. Sharecroppers can use salt in the land as part of efforts to increase production, for example, but the practice is harmful to soil health and the result is declining soil fertility, year by year.

Nonetheless, the trend towards increased sharecropping is likely to continue. “The farm owner can get Tk 12,000 per bigha in rent,” says Shanto, a sharecropper, “If they had to harvest paddy they could make at best Tk 10,000 for 20 maunds of rice. Besides, they get the Tk 12,000 without expense or effort.”

That's the bottom line: in the changed economics of Bangladeshi villages, with rising standards of living accompanied by higher labour costs, with better business opportunities in other sectors, traditional land owning families are moving away from the soil. In their place, a new entrepreneurial class of sharecropper has graduated from simple day labour to take the reins of much of the country's agriculture.

“For a one-year lease I get handsome money,” says one Muladuli landowner. “I can do something else with that money.”