There is a Bengali proverb about digging for an earthworm and finding a cobra. But one very poor woman has set an example of becoming self-reliant by digging for earthworms. There was a time when, unable to bear the pangs of hunger, she spent nights drinking sap stolen from other people's date palms, and in the dead of night went to neighbours to beg leftover rice soaked in water for her hungry children. Now farming has made her self-reliant. Besides growing rice and vegetables, she earns Tk 20,000 a month from vermicompost alone.

She is Fatema Begum, who lives in a tin shack on government khas land on the bank of the Shirish canal in Balakandar village of Kaliganj upazila, Jhenaidah. Her father is the late Syed Ali Mondol and her mother Rushia Begum. Her elder son, Kayem Ali, is sitting the SSC exam this year, and her younger daughter, Tripti Khatun, is in class four.

Speaking to Fatema, one learns of her life of struggle. Raised in a poor household, she was married at just 11. She had hoped for happy days in her husband's home, but had to fight poverty constantly, going hungry or half-fed instead. Ten years into the marriage her husband died of an incurable illness, and darkness fell on the widowed Fatema's life.

After her husband's death, unable to bear abuse from her father-in-law, mother-in-law and brother-in-law, she was forced to flee at night. Five years passed in her father's poor household, often without enough to eat. She was then married again, to Iqbal Hossain, son of Ashraful Hadi of neighbouring Shatbaria village, and they began living in a tin shack on government khas land on the bank of the Shirish canal. In a poor household, tormented by a husband addicted to drugs, she wanted to run away but endured everything for her children's sake.

From then on began Fatema's struggle to turn her life around, and through patience, honesty and her own efforts those days have changed. She has brought happiness back to her family by making and selling vermicompost at home. In 2005 she started her fight with worms in a single chari, a large clay pot, and has never looked back. She now has vermicompost in 350 pots, and by selling the compost and worms she earns about Tk 20,000 a month. With that money she has bought nearly a bigha of land and leased another nine and a half bighas, where she grows rice, wheat, mustard, banana, chilli, bottle gourd and other vegetables, and her household now gets along well.

At Fatema's home there is a long tin-roofed shed where roughly 350 clay pots filled with cow dung stand in rows. Inside them are a kind of red earthworm. The worms breed in the pots and, as they eat the dung, it dries into highly fertile vermicompost, which local farmers use in their fields to get good yields.

Fatema Begum says chemical fertiliser is very expensive. Besides, people are constantly falling ill with various complex and serious diseases from eating crops grown with chemical fertiliser, and excessive use of chemical fertiliser is ruining the natural health of the soil.

She says she began making vermicompost at home in 2005 after training at a workshop run by the Japan-based voluntary organisation Hunger Free World. She puts cow dung into local clay pots and releases a kind of earthworm into them; the droppings the worms leave after eating the dung are the vermicompost. The pots sit in a thatched shed built beside the house. Since then she has been making the compost at home and selling it to local farmers.

Fatema adds that at first, with no cattle of her own, she collected and bought dung from homes around the village, and her profit was much lower. Now she has three cows, so she no longer needs outside dung. She sells the compost at Tk 12 to 15 a kg and the worms at Tk 1,000 to 1,200 a kg, and she can sell at least Tk 20,000 to 22,000 worth of compost and worms a month. She also grows rice, wheat, mustard, chilli, bottle gourd and other vegetables, and her household now runs well.

"From my father's poor home to my husband's, poverty never left me," Fatema says. "After coming to my husband's home I lived in despair for quite a while. Then I thought I would do something productive myself that could get the household moving. With that in mind I took the chance to train in making vermicompost, and then started making compost at home."

Her neighbour Saiful Islam says Fatema's husband owns no cultivable land, but by making and selling compost for several years Fatema has become fairly well off. Besides buying a bigha of land, she has leased nine and a half bighas more and farms them organically herself. She once faced great hardship in family life, but her own efforts have built a self-reliant household. Fatema has also brought her drug-addicted husband back from drugs; although he does no work now, he prays five times a day.

Amena Begum of the same village says Fatema's household was once very poor, and life with two children had become impossible. But since Fatema took up farming, want has left the household and she can pay for her children's education.

Local UP member Azizul Islam says Fatema is an example for neglected women, and seeing her shows that women are no longer lagging behind. Not only has she become self-reliant by producing vermicompost, she is also contributing to the production of rice, wheat, mustard, banana and other local crops. "We are always beside Fatema," he says.

Kaliganj Upazila Agriculture Officer Jahidul Karim told Jago News he has seen Fatema Begum's farming and vermicompost production himself. A farm woman's success from nothing is an example for the country's farmers, he said. At a time when countless farmers are ruining soil fertility with excessive chemical fertiliser, Fatema's organic farming has amazed everyone.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.