Urban Agriculture

The urban poor in Bangladesh spend approximately 65-70% of their income on food.  Urban agriculture can improve living conditions of the urban poor through improving food security, generating income, and reducing HH expenditure on food.  Urban agriculture techniques include:

•          Homestead vegetable production

•          Poultry rearing

•          Milking cow rearing

•          Beef fattening (especially 6 months before Eid)

•          Goat rearing

•          Mushroom production, preservation & marketing

•          Bee keeping & honey production

•          Vaccinator development

•          Fish culture

•          Plant nursery & sapling selling

•          Agro-processing, value addition, marketing

•          Compost preparation from kitchen waste

•         Others

The Urban Agriculture sub-component (UA) aims to achieve the following:

   

·         Create opportunities for urban & peri-urban food production

·         Enhance HH food security and the nutrition status of urban poor HHs

·         Reduce HH food expenditure of the urban poor

·         Generate employment for the urban poor

·         Promote linkages to the local economy and service providers

Sensitisation Workshop on UA at Town Level

After the formation of CDCs a one-day sensitization workshop is organised at the Town level for:

·         CDC Office Bearers

·         Agribusiness stakeholders in the town

o        Representatives from Department of Agriculture Extension, Department of Livestock Services, Department of Fisheries

o        Local/national NGOs working in agricultural sector

o        Agribusiness representatives

·         Local government representatives.

The estimated number of participants depends on the number of functional CDCs, but no more than 100 participants should attend.  The main purpose of the workshop is to sensitise participants on why urban agriculture is necessary, how to optimize utilization of available agro-based household/community resources and share success stories of other towns.  The workshop also introduces the scope of linkages between local service providers and the community.

The CDC Office Bearers share the knowledge and information gained from the workshop with their CDC members and begin brain storming UA ideas.  The cost of the workshop is as per the approved UPPR rate.

 Use of Vacant Private/Khas Land

After identifying vacant private land in the Community Baseline Survey on Agro-based Resources, the community, with assistance from the TT, negotiates with the vacant land owners to use the land for food production.  The start-up costs will vary, depending on the type of food being produced and the amount of land available, and can range from BDT 5,000 to 40,000.  The community, with the assistance of the TT, estimates and justifies these costs in the SEF contract preparation stage, and also estimates the amount of food and other benefits that will be produced.  If a derelict pond is identified for rehabilitation, the intervention can be initiated through the SIF contract. In this case, the vacant land/pond owner /department will sign an MoA with the CDC extreme poor group (EP) to provide user right for mutually agreed  duration. The terms and conditions of MoA (e.g. lease value/share crop, duration, investment cost share or not, land development  cost share or not etc) have to be agreed by both parties and detail defined locally. The MoA should be signed preferably on non-judicial stamp of Tk. 150 (if not possible offset paper may be used). The witness of the MoA should be local elite/ responsible official of the government department. The signed MoA needs to be attached with community contract under SEF as Annexure. The contract may be made under SIF if major renovation of pond/land is necessary. In case of SIF contract, the MoA must be singed having user right of community people at least for 5 years.