Razia Khatun, a 24-year-old farmer from Khulna, used to help feed the fish in her family's pond. Now she runs her own pond using integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA), reinvests what she earns and trains her neighbours, WorldFish reports.
IMTA raises fish, shellfish and plants together in one pond so that nutrients are used more fully and the pond gives more than one source of food and income. WorldFish and its partners are helping farmers test IMTA systems suited to local conditions through the Asia-Africa BlueTech Superhighway (AABS) project. In Cox's Bazar and Khulna, AABS has trained 112 farmers, 21 of them women, in Farmer Field Schools.
Razia, a final-year social science student who has farmed fish since 2022, learned to manage finfish, freshwater prawns, apple snails and aquatic vegetables such as water spinach and helencha, along with pond preparation, feeding and biosecurity. "Once I started practicing IMTA, all my doubts disappeared," she said. The snails also feed her ducks and chickens, and the vegetables go to the family table.
In her last season, her 15-decimal IMTA pond made a profit of Tk 80,214. Total spending was about Tk 50,000, of which she paid Tk 5,000 herself and AABS covered the rest. She spent part of the income on fish seed and household costs, expanded her livestock and invested Tk 35,000 in a dairy cow. In the current cycle, partial harvests have already brought Tk 8,000 from shrimp and Tk 2,000 from water spinach.
After training-of-trainers sessions under AABS, Razia became a Farmer Field School facilitator and has trained six neighbouring farmers, three women and three men. Women in her village now come to her for advice.
She is now applying IMTA to two more ponds and trying dike cropping, growing beans and aubergine on the pond banks, and hopes to grow her fish and livestock business. "Women should not be afraid. If we work, we can earn our own income instead of depending on others," she said.
Photo: Ibrahim Husain Meraj / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: WorldFish
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