Climate Smart Gardening: A source of nutrition for many poor families
Marium Begum and her husband Abdul Barek have nothing else but only six decimals of land as their asset.
The poor couple from Dakkhin Kolkond village in Rangpur's Gangachara upazila built their homestead on four decimals of land, and cultivating different varieties of vegetable on the rest two decimals, called 'Climate smart vegetable garden.'
Marium has been producing six to seven different varieties of vegetables in her climate smart garden round the year.
The housewife, who has been farming different vegetables by applying raised-bed system, uses organic fertilisers in her garden, which provides vegetable supports worth Tk 50 Tk 60 to her family every day.
Now her husband Barek, a mason by profession, no longer has to go to the market to buy vegetables in order to meet the nutritional needs of the family.
"After meeting our own nutritional needs, I sell the surplus amounts of vegetables and earn some extra money as well," Marium said.
Earlier, the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) provided trainings to some 18,195 people from different ultra-poor families on 'Climate Smart Gardening.'
Of the beneficiaries, about 75 percent are women.
During the training, the beneficiaries were given ideas about raised-bed method, inter-cropping, crop diversification, mulching system and use of organic fertilisers in order to produce vegetables in their homestead gardens.
With the financial support of the European Union (EU), the training was provided under the supervision of Joint Action for Nutrition Outcome (JANO) Project, which is also co-funded by Austrian Development Corporation (ADCA).
Non-government organizations CARE, Plan International and ESDO are implementing the project in seven upazilas of Rangpur and Nilphamari districts since September 2018.
While talking, Sabita Rani of Melabar village in Nilphamari's Kishoreganj upazila said, "I have been producing seven to eight types of vegetables in my climate smart garden on two decimals of land."
The homestead garden is helping her a lot to meet the nutritional needs of her family throughout the year, she added.
Nihar Kumar Pramanik, Technical Officer at JANO Project, said they have been encouraging the low-income group families from different villages to set up 'Climate Smart Garden' on one or two decimals of land close to their homesteads.
Comments