Kazi Lutfun Nahar and Habib Torikul :
One winter afternoon, the setting sun casts long across the lowland field, started shimmering the soft yellow light. The breeze swaying across the sunflower fields when we are walking through the road. A gray bearded old men working in the field. From twenty yards apart we asked enthusiastically – “Chacha (Uncle) do you know Ashit Mondol how we can get his house?” Following directions, we crossed a bridge, passed a tea stall and shops, and crossed another wooden bridge to a path shaded by banana trees. Ashit Mondol (43) was busy with collecting sunflower from the field which is a bit far from his house when we arrived. After initial introduction he started to talk. Following his experience, we asked him quietly enthusiastically, what are the benefits of growing sunflower? With a trace of smile he replied, “Sunflower is getting huge popularity among the coastal farmers because of its good market value. The price hike of oil seed intends local farmers to be involved with sunflower cultivation. Sunflower cultivation requires timely watering and fertilizer application. I invested 9,000 TK on my land, which is approximately more than 0.95 acres and from this cultivation profit was about Tk 25,000-30,000 after presumption of production cost.”
Since the last decade enormous economic, infrastructural, agricultural, and human losses are caused by two super cyclones in southwestern coastal areas of Bangladesh. It is estimated that about 0.7 million hectares have been directly affected by SIDR in 2007. In addition it was found that instantaneously after cyclone AILA, total rice production in Satkhira decreased from 0.53 million tons in 2008 to 0.46 million tons in 2009 (BBS, 2009, 2010). According to Maple croft, climate vulnerability Index-2014 Bangladesh ranked first among the 170 countries and it will likely suffer more from climate change by 2025 than any other disaster prone country. Approximately 97.1 percent of coastal areas and over 35 million people of coastal Bangladesh are vulnerable and exposed to multiple climate change hazards, are estimated and projected. Southwestern coastal region of Bangladesh is highly susceptible to climate change impacts and socio-economic development pressures.
Bangladesh is meeting the increasing challenges of food security in changing climate continuously with resolve and innovation in agricultural mostly in coastal areas. People in the southern part of Bangladesh can’t harvest all types of crops because most of the land remains fallow in the winter Rabi season due to rain or irrigation water limitations and soil salinity constraints, rough weather etc. Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) focuses on agriculture in Coastal area, floating garden, community based adaptation, advocacy to climate change adaptation, coastline and flood defenses. Climate change impacts have immediate and long-term ecological consequences, which adversely affect agriculture and allied livelihood sectors in the coastal region of Bangladesh. Climate Change has added a new dimension to community risks and vulnerabilities to natural disasters, especially in Coastal regions. The combination of already frequent natural hazards and high vulnerability of livelihood options coupled with expected climate change impacts.
Sunflower is a recently introduced as quality based oilseed crop and gaining popularity among local farmers because of its easy extraction method. It ensures the cropping intensity and its diversification. Through nutrient recycling and pulverization soil moisturize can be improved. Sunflower is categorized as a low to medium drought sensitive crop as well as the cultivation of sunflower may be suitable in the coastal environment because of its high yield and extensive adaptability. In 16 districts of Bangladesh Sunflower is being grown-up and the average production is about 1.2 t/ha, which is relatively encouraging.
According to Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Sunflower ranges second subsequent to soybean as an oil crop in the world. When there is late rain or flood sowing of oil seeds like-Mustard, Sesame is deferred causing production hampering. Under such condition Sunflower stands as good substitute to fill up this gap of production.
Islamic Relief, Bangladesh (IR,B) is providing technical and monetary help to the farmers for sunflower cultivation in several areas. The goal is to contribute to achieving food security and reducing hunger and malnutrition through increased environmentally sustainable agricultural production. It’s demonstrated that salinity levels in the soil have increased sharply over the last 20 years. All local farmers in Coastal area strongly believe that salinity intrusion in soil and water is the main challenge in farming. After Cyclone and AILA salinity has intensified, which hampered the agricultural production thus most of the arable land remained fallow due to intrusion of salinity. IR, B has taken the scheme on climate adaptive livelihood option and cropping intensity in Coastal area in Bangladesh. For the first time a project plan has been taken by IR, B to stimulate the farmers of coastal area to cultivate sunflower through the farmers’ field laboratory, which is a saline adaptive crop.
Farmers Field Laboratory (FFL) is a piece of land where a farmer tries to test a new technology using his existing knowledge and experience with the support of expert knowledge. More generally FFL is an approach through which farmers can test a new crop technology with their own initiative and capacity. For adopting new cropping pattern, avoiding risks of climate change and increasing yielding intensity IR, B implementing Farmers Field Laboratory. It’s evidently found that yield through FFL satisfactory.
“Following Farmers Field Laboratory (FFL) crop rotation is becoming easy constantly. In prior feasibility of sunflower production with increasing salinity was not known by Coastal farmers. Now the unusable land has turn into the effective one with yielding climate adaptive crop with the assistance of FFL in Coastal zone. For Sunflower production Compost fertilizer is more effective than Chemical fertilizer, through which wide range of production has been possible. With plenteous production of Sunflower family needs and nutritional demands of Coastal people can be perfectly met”. – Added by Ashit Mondol.
Sunflower is a thermo neutral crop growing both in Rabi and Kharif seasons in anywhere in Bangladesh. It can fill up the gap between production and consumption of edible oil by expanding the area of Sunflower production. Considerably diversification of oil seed production program can be possible through extending Sunflower production. Sunflower is a short duration yielding crop and it has potential to reduce the existing gap between production and consumption of edible oil because contains almost 40-50% oil and rich in protein about 23 per cent. Most favorable time of sowing seeds is on November 2nd week. It is required 2-3 irrigations to produce a yield of about 3 t/ha and 1 irrigation in the Rabi season. Within 120-130 days Sunflower is being matured. During harvesting time plants turn yellowish and seeds become black, curved.
Since it requires a little number of irrigation, Sunflower can be grown in drought as well as less water area. So there is no need of hoisting ground water for irrigation, climate will be safe from being exploited. Even under dry land condition Barind tract cultivation of Sunflower is more favorable than other oil seeds.
“Amusingly, a good number of female farmers are getting involved in sunflower cultivation on their fallow land since cultivation is easier, cheaper and more profitable. Approximately (2ds-12ds)/m threshold of salinity is adoptable by Sunflower. A kg of sunflower seeds brings 500 to 600 grams of oil, an amount more than that from any other oil seeds. A very little irrigation and small amounts of fertilizers and insecticides are required.”
Sunflower can make considerable profit, since the investment cost is about Tk 4,000 for per ha for seeds along with other production costs, with a return of about Tk 45,000 in per ha. A beneficiary of IR, B stated that ”a bumper production of Sunflower is possible with assistance of Farmers Field laboratory (FFL), after meeting my family requirement about Tk 5,000 can be got from remaining products.” If cultivation of Sunflower is going through a larger scale, an improved production and better profits can be achieved, which will ensure an economic improvement and sustainability of the local people.
One winter afternoon, the setting sun casts long across the lowland field, started shimmering the soft yellow light. The breeze swaying across the sunflower fields when we are walking through the road. A gray bearded old men working in the field. From twenty yards apart we asked enthusiastically – “Chacha (Uncle) do you know Ashit Mondol how we can get his house?” Following directions, we crossed a bridge, passed a tea stall and shops, and crossed another wooden bridge to a path shaded by banana trees. Ashit Mondol (43) was busy with collecting sunflower from the field which is a bit far from his house when we arrived. After initial introduction he started to talk. Following his experience, we asked him quietly enthusiastically, what are the benefits of growing sunflower? With a trace of smile he replied, “Sunflower is getting huge popularity among the coastal farmers because of its good market value. The price hike of oil seed intends local farmers to be involved with sunflower cultivation. Sunflower cultivation requires timely watering and fertilizer application. I invested 9,000 TK on my land, which is approximately more than 0.95 acres and from this cultivation profit was about Tk 25,000-30,000 after presumption of production cost.”
Since the last decade enormous economic, infrastructural, agricultural, and human losses are caused by two super cyclones in southwestern coastal areas of Bangladesh. It is estimated that about 0.7 million hectares have been directly affected by SIDR in 2007. In addition it was found that instantaneously after cyclone AILA, total rice production in Satkhira decreased from 0.53 million tons in 2008 to 0.46 million tons in 2009 (BBS, 2009, 2010). According to Maple croft, climate vulnerability Index-2014 Bangladesh ranked first among the 170 countries and it will likely suffer more from climate change by 2025 than any other disaster prone country. Approximately 97.1 percent of coastal areas and over 35 million people of coastal Bangladesh are vulnerable and exposed to multiple climate change hazards, are estimated and projected. Southwestern coastal region of Bangladesh is highly susceptible to climate change impacts and socio-economic development pressures.
Bangladesh is meeting the increasing challenges of food security in changing climate continuously with resolve and innovation in agricultural mostly in coastal areas. People in the southern part of Bangladesh can’t harvest all types of crops because most of the land remains fallow in the winter Rabi season due to rain or irrigation water limitations and soil salinity constraints, rough weather etc. Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) focuses on agriculture in Coastal area, floating garden, community based adaptation, advocacy to climate change adaptation, coastline and flood defenses. Climate change impacts have immediate and long-term ecological consequences, which adversely affect agriculture and allied livelihood sectors in the coastal region of Bangladesh. Climate Change has added a new dimension to community risks and vulnerabilities to natural disasters, especially in Coastal regions. The combination of already frequent natural hazards and high vulnerability of livelihood options coupled with expected climate change impacts.
Sunflower is a recently introduced as quality based oilseed crop and gaining popularity among local farmers because of its easy extraction method. It ensures the cropping intensity and its diversification. Through nutrient recycling and pulverization soil moisturize can be improved. Sunflower is categorized as a low to medium drought sensitive crop as well as the cultivation of sunflower may be suitable in the coastal environment because of its high yield and extensive adaptability. In 16 districts of Bangladesh Sunflower is being grown-up and the average production is about 1.2 t/ha, which is relatively encouraging.
According to Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Sunflower ranges second subsequent to soybean as an oil crop in the world. When there is late rain or flood sowing of oil seeds like-Mustard, Sesame is deferred causing production hampering. Under such condition Sunflower stands as good substitute to fill up this gap of production.
Islamic Relief, Bangladesh (IR,B) is providing technical and monetary help to the farmers for sunflower cultivation in several areas. The goal is to contribute to achieving food security and reducing hunger and malnutrition through increased environmentally sustainable agricultural production. It’s demonstrated that salinity levels in the soil have increased sharply over the last 20 years. All local farmers in Coastal area strongly believe that salinity intrusion in soil and water is the main challenge in farming. After Cyclone and AILA salinity has intensified, which hampered the agricultural production thus most of the arable land remained fallow due to intrusion of salinity. IR, B has taken the scheme on climate adaptive livelihood option and cropping intensity in Coastal area in Bangladesh. For the first time a project plan has been taken by IR, B to stimulate the farmers of coastal area to cultivate sunflower through the farmers’ field laboratory, which is a saline adaptive crop.
Farmers Field Laboratory (FFL) is a piece of land where a farmer tries to test a new technology using his existing knowledge and experience with the support of expert knowledge. More generally FFL is an approach through which farmers can test a new crop technology with their own initiative and capacity. For adopting new cropping pattern, avoiding risks of climate change and increasing yielding intensity IR, B implementing Farmers Field Laboratory. It’s evidently found that yield through FFL satisfactory.
“Following Farmers Field Laboratory (FFL) crop rotation is becoming easy constantly. In prior feasibility of sunflower production with increasing salinity was not known by Coastal farmers. Now the unusable land has turn into the effective one with yielding climate adaptive crop with the assistance of FFL in Coastal zone. For Sunflower production Compost fertilizer is more effective than Chemical fertilizer, through which wide range of production has been possible. With plenteous production of Sunflower family needs and nutritional demands of Coastal people can be perfectly met”. – Added by Ashit Mondol.
Sunflower is a thermo neutral crop growing both in Rabi and Kharif seasons in anywhere in Bangladesh. It can fill up the gap between production and consumption of edible oil by expanding the area of Sunflower production. Considerably diversification of oil seed production program can be possible through extending Sunflower production. Sunflower is a short duration yielding crop and it has potential to reduce the existing gap between production and consumption of edible oil because contains almost 40-50% oil and rich in protein about 23 per cent. Most favorable time of sowing seeds is on November 2nd week. It is required 2-3 irrigations to produce a yield of about 3 t/ha and 1 irrigation in the Rabi season. Within 120-130 days Sunflower is being matured. During harvesting time plants turn yellowish and seeds become black, curved.
Since it requires a little number of irrigation, Sunflower can be grown in drought as well as less water area. So there is no need of hoisting ground water for irrigation, climate will be safe from being exploited. Even under dry land condition Barind tract cultivation of Sunflower is more favorable than other oil seeds.
“Amusingly, a good number of female farmers are getting involved in sunflower cultivation on their fallow land since cultivation is easier, cheaper and more profitable. Approximately (2ds-12ds)/m threshold of salinity is adoptable by Sunflower. A kg of sunflower seeds brings 500 to 600 grams of oil, an amount more than that from any other oil seeds. A very little irrigation and small amounts of fertilizers and insecticides are required.”
Sunflower can make considerable profit, since the investment cost is about Tk 4,000 for per ha for seeds along with other production costs, with a return of about Tk 45,000 in per ha. A beneficiary of IR, B stated that ”a bumper production of Sunflower is possible with assistance of Farmers Field laboratory (FFL), after meeting my family requirement about Tk 5,000 can be got from remaining products.” If cultivation of Sunflower is going through a larger scale, an improved production and better profits can be achieved, which will ensure an economic improvement and sustainability of the local people.
Table-1 illustrates the production of Sunflower in per hector through Farmers Field Laboratory. As from the table, it is evident that Sunflower production in Coastal area through Farmers Field Laboratory strategy remains in close proximity to the highest expected yield. It was seen that Sunflower production in Coastal area was 1.5 t/ha (Ton per hectare) where the national average yield was 1.4 t/ha which increased by 7.14 per cent compared to national average.
“It helps me to minimise high cost for bottled edible oil for family use which can be added now in family income. After cultivating 0.50 acres of land I expected to get 8 to 10 maunds locally 44kg in a maund of seeds, from which I’ll got 190 to 200 liters of oil. Per-Maund is sold between Tk 1800-1900, which is sufficient to meet my family’s yearly demand.”
For a long period storage of Sunflower seeds can be possible. In this case seeds are kept in air tight poly bags after proper drying. Then stored in kerosene tin, big clayed container or a drum fixed with cover.
Vulnerable people induced to climate change have been trying to build their own coping strategies and mechanisms to cope with the hazards affecting agricultural performance and other factors adversely affecting their livelihood options. Following Farmers Field Laboratory, several climate adaptive livelihood practices have been identified and adapted for future challenges of food insecurity with climate vulnerability.
(The writers work with Islamic Relief Bangladesh)
