Rain-fed agriculture becomes less viable livelihood option

Despite various government safety net programmes, households of the country's low income group are increasingly becoming vulnerable to food insecurity as rain-fed agriculture has become a less viable livelihood option, revealed a study.
Financially insolvent farmers whose livelihoods are highly sensitive to rainfall patterns are finding rainfall “too erratic” while irrigation too costly, it said.
The findings of the study, “Rainfall, Food Security and Human Mobility: Case Study Bangladesh”, conducted by Centre for Global Change (CGC) and CARE Bangladesh, was revealed at Hotel Lakeshore in the capital yesterday.
“Noticeable changes in rainfall patterns include more extreme events, less floods, more droughts and dry spells during rainy seasons,” said CGC Executive Director Dr Ahsan Uddin Ahmed.
The research was based on Kurigram district, serving as an example of how climate change was affecting rural people, especially of the low income group, he said.
As a consequence of the food insecurity resulting from changing rainfall patterns, males of low and lower-middle income group were migrating to faraway districts to earn a living as farmhands, he said.
“Consequently women in the migrants' households pay a heavy toll, as they have to work harder to sustain their family's food security and undertake extra workload to pay off debts of their husbands,” he added.
In the absence of the male, women and adolescent girl children often face sexual harassment, forcing the parents to get the child married off soon after puberty, affecting her reproductive health, he said.
One of the study's researchers Dr Selim Reza Hassan, country manager of Solidaridad Network Asia, said, “Kurigram has 16 rivers and the primary livelihood of the area used to be fishing. But now there are only a few fishermen -- an example of challenges faced due to changing patterns of climate and its impact on people's lives.”