Diversification giving hope to small jute farmers and labourers

Jute, popularly known as 'golden fibre' for ages, has become alternately both a boon and a bane for the country's farming millions who depend heavily for their livelihood on this product. One bad year - low price for the product or low yield due to bad weather - would invariably prompt the farmers to switch to other crops and reduce their acreage of jute cultivation leading to its production shortfall. In the process, the raw jute price would rise, again luring the hapless farmers back into putting more acreage under jute and consequent oversupply will dip the prices. Historically, this rigmarole has been ruling the pattern of life for the jute farmers.
As a result, the multitude of people who survive as landless agricultural labourers working for the jute farmers are also faced with problems they can hardly endure. Last year in the northern region, farmers who sold their raw jute at around Tk 2,000-2,200 per maund are not getting even Tk 1,300-1,500 for the same quantity this year even in August.
The farmer from Bagha upazila of Rangpur said: "I was compelled to sell jute at low price as I badly needed money to continue Aman cultivation and meet up family expenses."
Meanwhile, as happened in bad years in the past, local private mills (there are eight private-owned jute mills in the area) and businessmen who buy up cheap to make hefty profits later, are not buying raw jute pushing the price further down. In the absence of any government-fixed price, active buyers - mostly middlemen - are also dictating price and bidding their timer for distress sale. This has gripped the jute growers, particularly in the northern region, with deep frustration and anguish.      
PERCEPTIBLE CHANGE UNDERGOING: Perhaps this system is now undergoing a perceptible change for the better. People living in the northern region and Rangpur, in particular, are now showing interest in handloom industry for producing eco-friendly diversified jute-based products. This is going to increase demand for raw jute in addition to the needs of the jute industry and similar uses. There is also a growing demand for the diversified jute products at home and abroad.
Besides, hundreds of women, mostly wives of landless farm labourers, are increasingly becoming self-reliant by producing handloom garments which are being collectively marketed by some of the well-known NGOs active in the area. Some of the government agencies and NGOs like RDRS, BRAC and ASA are involved in organising three-month-long training to these women for sewing readymade handloom garments and marketing their products. They are producing baby wears, salwar-kamiz, blouse, petticoat, shirts, pants, fatua, caps and the like and earning between Tk 150 and 200 daily. The NGOs are responsible for marketing those products. The women have now become regular earning members of the family bringing a semblance of solvency and stability.          
Besides this handloom initiative, according to a newspaper report, a northern-based local NGO, Devi Chowdhurani Polli Unnayan Kendra (DCPUK), recently organised a workshop in Rangpur under a project on promoting sustainable consumption and production of diversified jute products. The idea is to provide assistance including capital and technologies to the local entrepreneurs for promoting diversified jute products and also marketing facilities. The idea is not only to generate demand for raw jute consumption, but also create job opportunities for local unemployed young male and female workers and help reduce poverty they are trapped in.
The NGO, which has undertaken this development project in cooperation with others, will initially be confined to four upazilas of Rangpur.  The Care Bangladesh, a privately run American agency has become involved with the project and the European Union (EU) is funding to promote jute-based handloom industries involving local small entrepreneurs.
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