Producing food in the homesteads

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The population of Bangladesh is still preponderantly rural although the rate of urban migration of people in this country has been increasing. Nonetheless, about 80 per cent of the people of Bangladesh have a rural existence and they live in small homesteads with some lands unlike in urban areas where land availability per family is far smaller compared to their rural counterparts.
Many of these households in rural areas may not own any cultivable lands at all. But tiny parcels of lands in and around the homesteads they own, can be turned quite productive for the purpose of both adding to the nutrition of the members of their families as well as for increasing family income. In this connection, programmes for homestead food production do need to be operationalised in the country. Under one such programme in the char lands (Lands accreted from rivers) in northern Bangladesh, some notable successes have been achieved.
Under it, the strips of homestead lands that once remained fallow and totally unproductive, are now blooming in most cases. Female members of households have transformed these lands into flourishing kitchen gardens where vegetables, fruits and even spices are being cultivated. The fruits and vegetables farmed in this minuscule plots are producing adequately in most cases to meet the nutritional needs of the individual households. The surpluses are being marketed and generating incomes.
The gains for the rural households from countrywide homestead food production programme (HFPP) can, thus, be two fold : the rural poor will not have to stress their already poor purchasing power from having to buy a considerable part of their food supply from the markers. Rather, they will make an income from selling the same. Furthermore, the food supply of households and hence the nutritional needs of families can also be met from the raising of poultry birds and goats as such activities are included in the programme. Thus, the intakes of proteins from animals sources such as meat and eggs will also increase for the rural families and so also income from the sale of unconsumed poultry birds, eggs and goats.
Indeed, such a programme can be a path breaking venture, paving the way for achieving country's food security, for now and in the future. It should also help in the alleviation of poverty of rural people and in improving their health from better nutrition.
Obaidul Quader
Rampura, Dhaka