The business of farming
Farming, it's a way of life
Abdul Jabbar Khan greets us warmly as we enter the internal courtyard of his house. It is mid afternoon and the heat is finally subsiding a little as we take a seat. Jabbar Khan sits down with us, alongside his mother, daughters and grandchildren who have all gathered today to chat with us about the impressive business that he has built over the last few years.
Farming has been passed down through the generations in Jabbar Khans family. His father was a farmer, as was his grandfather. His children have inherited farming having grown up on this small plot of land in Faridpur, Bangladesh where farming is a way of life. Jabbar Khan is sharing with them his passion and knowledge for farming as well as teaching them how to find new, innovative ways of adding value to the farm. Jabbar Khan is nothing if not creative and his determination to expand the farm beyond working the land is clear.
New crops, new opportunities
In the last months of 2012, under the USAID Horticulture Project, Jabbar Khan was introduced to orange fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP) by Proshika, an implementing partner of CIP Bangladesh. Proshika is one of the leading national NGOs focused on improving health and livelihoods in rural Bangladesh. Jabbar Khan participated in a local training where he was given 100 vines for multiplication. From the supplied vines he multiplied enough cuttings to plant 5 decimals of land for root production in the next cropping season. And he was quickly impressed. The sweetpotato that he planted grew quickly and was healthy and strong. He started to harvest the roots and give them to his wife and daughters to prepare for the family – they loved its bright orange colour, its naturally sweet taste and the way it filled you up so quickly. Impressed, Jabbar Khan began to increase the amount of OFSP that he was growing on his land and shifted his focus so much that it became his primary crop.
Jabbar Khan became a local proponent of OFSP. He told his neighbours and friends about how well it grew and how much his family enjoyed it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And slowly but surely friends and neighbors began to plant as well. Buoyed with this response, he also started to discuss the crop with local farmers and business owners to see if there might be new markets at which to sell OFSP. Now that he was growing more OFSP he had a surplus (after feeding his family) and so needed to find new ways to make money from these orange roots.
Taking the farm to market
With time and persistence and a little help from CIP and Proshika, Jabbar Khan was able to reach out to marketplaces in urban areas and started supplying a small but steady amount of OFSP to marketplaces in Dhaka including Agora Super Shop, Kawran Bazaar, Savar and Sham Bazaar. Proshika helped Jabbar Khan with links to transport companies who could take the harvest to Dhaka for him – and with his mobile phone – Jabbar Khan was able to negotiate with the market managers on price without leaving his farm.
Jabbar Khan was pleased with the way things were going. With a steady supply and a good market in Dhaka which embraced OFSP, he was able to establish a more regular income. He was able to pay off the loans he had taken to purchase land and machinery a few years back. He was also able to put money towards building a 2 room house and a sanitary latrine for his extended family as well as a roadside shop, a cow shed and a processing area (next to his house) which he now uses for storage and processing of OFSP.
Excited to explore new possibilities Jabbar Khan, with support from Proshika and local staff from the International Potato Center (CIP) began to explore ways to process the roots. CIP provided access to ideas and technologies including a small machine to slice the sweetpotato – and this allowed Jabbar Khan to create new products. He is currently producing flour (a combination of wheat and OFSP) and he now has a regular customer base for this product from his neighborhood and he is slowly expanding the sales to Dhaka and Sylhet as well.
A neighborhood entrepreneur
Jabbar Khan harvests on average between 160-180 kilograms of OFSP per decimal of land. He has found that OFSP is more profitable than other crops that he was growing and that on some crops he was actually making a loss as labor costs were high and demand was low. In particular rice has become very cheap on the market and so Jabbar Khan has really limited the amount which he grows.
Jabbar Khan not only sells his own harvest but also purchases OFSP from neighbouring farmers to sell to the larger markets in Dhaka. As Jabbar Khan says: “there is a lot of supply in this local area as many farmers are now growing OFSP and so we have to look elsewhere for markets. There is strong demand for the crop in Dhaka especially among the urban elite and health conscious groups.”
To facilitate this, Jabbar Khan has a storage area to house the sweetpotato he purchases. When he receives orders from Dhaka he works with his team to transport the goods to the market: “I often use a courier service for this. It is more expensive but it is much easier and more convenient for me”. Dhaka represents a good market where Jabbar Khan can get BDT 35 ($US0.45) per kilogram compared with BDT 20 ($US0.26) per kilograms in the smaller, local markets.
Jabbar Khans entire family helps him with his business – from the youngest to the eldest: “Once the roots are harvested the family helps out with grading, sorting, cleaning, packing, cutting the roots and sometimes processing. I have 2 machines on site which can be used to slice the sweetpotato ready for further processing which my daughter helps with”.
Securing the future
Jabbar Khan feels more content these days - he has some money in the bank, he has a house for him and his family and a small shop which is managed by his son. He has fields nearby on which he can grow a range of crops, a large portion of which is given to growing OFSP. He has paid off all his loans and has not had to take any new ones. Jabbar Khan feels more secure and knows that he has a little money put away to deal with emergencies which arise, like recently when he was unwell and had to travel abroad to India for surgery. He is also able to provide for his extended family with food and housing and is able to send his daughter to university.
Jabbar Khan has also been able to provide employment opportunities in the local area. “Mostly they are women who work for me. I pay BDT 200 ($US 2.57) per day and provide two meals. They assist with planting right through to harvesting and helping with planting, weeding, soil preparation, watering, fertilizer application and harvesting. Once the crop is harvested we start work on the processing side of things and preparing the soil and land for the next planting. I have employed 3 people on a permanent basis and then hire a handful of people during busy periods such as harvesting.
A modern farmer
Jabbar Khan proudly takes us on a tour of his house, storage unit and nearby fields. Talking with Jabbar Khan it is clear that he is happy with what farming has brought him and his family – but is clear that it has taken a lot of hard work to get where he is today.
This is very much a family of farmers and it seems like for Jabbar Khans children and grandchildren farming will remain a part of their lives even if some of them leave the land in the future for urban jobs. Its obvious that Jabbar Khan is passing on to his children and grandchildren a love and respect for the land and a recognition of the hard work it takes to make it successful. You also get the feeling that Jabbar Khan is passing on something else to the next generation – a willingness to take risks, to be creative and bold and a desire to try new things. Jabbar Khan is a farmer, a family man as well as a businessman and an entrepreneur.
Farming is changing quickly in Bangladesh as new technology becomes available and with increased pressures on land and the environment and the ability to be adaptive, creative and confident will surely give the next generations of Bangladeshi farmers, like Jabbar Khans children, a head start.
In Bangladesh, the International Potato Center is currently implementing the SUSTAIN project which is a 5-year partnership (2013-2018), coordinated by CIP and financed by the UK Department for International Development, to scale up the nutrition benefits of bio-fortified orange-fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP) in Bangladesh, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Rwanda and the spillover countries of Zambia and Tanzania. The goal is to reach 1.2 million households with under-5 year old children. SUSTAIN supports integrated interventions in agriculture, nutrition, utilization, and marketing to strengthen production and consumption of OFSP. SUSTAIN emphasizes rigorous measurement and evaluation in order to assess the scalability of these interventions and contribute to global evidence on achieving large scale nutrition outcomes through bio-fortified crops.
CIPs Bangladesh projects are building on continued progress in sub-Saharan Africa where the International Potato Center (CIP) has been working to bring the nutritional benefits of OFSP to nearly 2 million households in countries across sub-Saharan Africa affected by vitamin A deficiency. Over many years of working on OFSP, CIP has demonstrated that rigorous research in agriculture and health sciences can be combined to create solutions for global nutrition challenges and that these can be scaled up to reach millions of vulnerable families.
Words & Images: Sara Quinn, Regional Communications Specialist, International Potato Center