• by IPS Correspondents (london)
• Friday, November 25, 1994
• Inter Press Service

LONDON, Nov 25 (IPS) - The uninterrupted views across Bangladesh's flat and glinting rice fields, thought to comprise about one third of the country's land mass, could soon be a thing of the past.

A multitude of fruit trees and vigorously sprouting vegetables are set to divide the plethora of waterways.

Tomatoes will jostle beans, peas and other green vegetables along the banks that separate one field from another. And beneath the surface of the water, Common Carp will nudge against the ankles of farmers as they tend their rice shoots.

This vision of bounty is the driving force behind a four-year project run by the international development agency CARE.

Combination rice farming is entirely new to Bangladesh the agency says, although it is common in South-east Asia. The project is designed to raise the income of small rice farmers in Bangladesh by combining fish cultivation with rice and vegetable production while simultaneously boosting awareness of environmental issues.

The country's population is increasing by two percent a year, and yet rice production per unit of land, and inland fish production is at a standstill, according to CARE's desk officer for Asia at the London office, Steve Hollingworth.

To correct the imbalance between production and consumption, land must be used to the full.

"If all the rice field embankments were put together, they would amount to an area of valuable, uncultivated land the size of an entire district," he says.

Malcolm Beveridge, senior lecturer at the Institute of Agriculture in Stirling, says the concept has never taken hold before now because "Bangladeshis have no great tradition of fish farming. High rural illiteracy denied farmers access to information explaining how to go about it".

CARE's training courses, which specifically avoid classroom- style aids, targets 28,000 small farmers in the Rangpur and Jessore districts.

They form part of the project called 'Interfish', which started last year and runs until June 1997. It is being financed at a cost of 1.6 million pounds (2.4 million dollars) by the British government's aid division, the Overseas Development Administration (ODA).

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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