Farming on water to foil climate change effects

Producing vegetables and other farm products in floating gardens, when water swells to agriculture field, is becoming very popular in Bangladesh as part of efforts to get adapted to the impacts of climate change, reported the New York Times (NYT).  
NYT, in its November 18 issue, reported: Each year the brown water of the Gumani river swells during the summer monsoon, creeping over the surrounding fields to flood Charbhangura, a village of 2,500 people in Pabna district. From July to October the water can rise at least 10 feet. When the fields get flooded, farmers of the village have no work.
"There is water all around," said Hafiza Khatun, 25, a mother of two, whose family income used to vanish for six months of the year when her farm labourer husband had nothing to do. "There was no happiness."
But three years ago, she was trained by Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha (SSS), a Bangladeshi non-profit organisation, to tend an unusual source of food and income: a floating farm with a duck coop, fish enclosures and vegetable garden moored by rope to the riverbank.
Five to 10 women can share the structure, splitting about Tk 130,000, or about $1,700, a year. SSS supplies seeds, fish, duck feed and other materials that cost about Tk 10,000.
With the extra income from selling eggs, fish and vegetables, Hafiza Khatun started saving money in a bank for the first time, bought a bed to keep her and her family off wet ground in their dirt-floored home, and helps her husband support the family.
Climate change threatens to worsen the severity and duration of flood in low-lying Bangladesh. Floating farms - and produce that can flourish in flood - are a way to help Bangladeshis live with rising water.
In the country's northern part, agricultural land is regularly flooded, as rivers are engorged by the annual Himalayan snow melt and monsoon rains. In one of the world's most densely populated countries, where 156 million people live, thousands are left with no way to earn a living. Many migrate to already overcrowded cities, contributing to urban blight.
 "There is big demand for solutions for climate change-affected areas," said SSS founder and executive director Mohammed Rezwan.
He founded SSS in 1998 after the disastrous flood, and focused on building schools on boats, and worked to ensure that thousands of children would not fall behind when floodwater blocked roads.
To date, the non-profit's fleet, which now numbers 22 schools, five health clinics and 10 libraries, has provided continuity of education and other services to more than 70,000 children in villages, isolated by seasonal flood.
Four years ago it started building floating farms for villagers, and particularly the landless poor, to help them eke out a living during the months of flood.
So far there are 40 floating farms that are worked by about 300 women. Mr. Rezwan has ambitious plans to create 400, to serve 3,000 women and their families in the next few years.
He also opines that the floating farm concept can help other developing riverine countries, as has been the case with floating schools. "They have the potential to be replicated around the world," he said.
A floating farm measures about 56 feet long and 16 feet wide. The coop can house 100 ducks, and is equipped with a small solar panel to power lights inside. It floats on empty oil drums, plastic containers and a bamboo platform.
The coop is attached to bamboo rods that make up two rows of fish enclosures where tilapia is farmed in blue plastic nets. The outer rails of bamboo support the garden. They hold old plastic jugs cut in half where villagers grow cucumbers, beans and gourds in soil and natural fertilizer.
The duck coop, originally built on a bamboo platform, now rests atop more-buoyant plastic oil drums - recycled and found materials are enthusiastically used alongside locally grown bamboo.
Villagers can now build the entire structure for the equivalent of $260, which is covered by SSS, Mr. Rezwan added.