A farm family's disaster does not end when the floodwater falls or the cyclone passes, Farida Akhter of UBINIG writes in a policy paper dated 24 October. Lost crops, seed, planting time and fodder deepen the damage, and she argues Bangladesh needs a farm policy that protects people's capacity to keep cultivating.
She presents the practice of the Nayakrishi Andolon, a farming movement built on biodiversity, as an important foundation for that policy. It links many crops and varieties, living soil, livestock, fish and other aquatic life, community seed-keeping institutions and farmers' own knowledge.
The paper sets Nayakrishi beside Target 10 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which asks that agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries and forestry be managed so their foundations last. In the writer's view, Nayakrishi could be one of the main routes for Bangladesh's contribution on the farming side, though the whole target also needs action in other sectors.
Akhter does not treat resilience as simply absorbing a shock. A family can bring in a crop by selling breeding animals, eating its last seed or taking on debt it can hardly repay, she writes, and be more exposed when the next disaster comes. Counting replanted land is not enough; recovery programmes should weigh those outcomes as well.
Nayakrishi's ten principles include ending pesticides and chemical fertiliser, keeping seed in farmers' hands, protecting groundwater, mixed cropping and rotation, judging the yield of the whole farm system, and caring for livestock and aquatic life. Compost, crop residues and cow dung keep the soil alive, the paper says.
She also states the limits. Diversity does not guarantee protection, and a big flood or storm can destroy several of a family's supports at once, so this farming needs early warning, safe shelter, drainage and social protection alongside it. Citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, she notes that the benefits depend on local conditions.
The views are the writer's own. Written by Farida Akhter, UBINIG.
Source: UBINIG
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