How a value chain kindles hope for marginal farmers

It has been a never-ending story. Whenever seasonal agricultural produce arrives at the market in huge quantities, prices fall. This can be quite bad for the farmers' income, at best, or a complete disaster for farmers, at worst. 

Farmers often fail to recover the production cost, which many of them had collected through high-interest loans. This gives birth to a variety of sad episodes.

In a situation like this, some farmers are forced to feed the crop to their cattle instead of taking it to the market. And, some do not even bother to employ labourers to harvest the produce and let it rot in the field in order to avoid wasting more money. 

In an even sadder episode last year, a farmer set fire to his paddy in the field.

Shukla Rani produces a few crops around the year, with her family, in Taraganj, Rangpur district.

Just like most other farming families in the country, they face the same set of problems: Prices fall when there is an abundance, but she cannot preserve the produce to market it at a later time.

"If we can do an early vegetable, we get a good price. For instance, for early tomatoes, the price is Tk20 to Tk25 per kg, but we get only Tk10 for a kg of tomato in the peak season," Sukla Rani told The Business Standard. 

This predicament is about to change, starting with hundreds of farming families like Sukla's.

A series of training programmes has been organised in different locations of the country to guide and teach the participants how to process their produce and enable them to sell it for a better price.

Under a project titled 'Tenure rights over land and collective farming practices of the poor and marginalised,' Association for Land Reform and Development (ALRD) is organising the training.

"The goal is to create a value chain with the food products produced by marginal farmers and a customer base who are willing to pay a fair price for the products," Rajib Parves, a project official and a trainer who also works as an independent agricultural organiser, told The Business Standard. 

"Staying at their homes, they make these products with their local agricultural produce," Rajib added.

Processing fresh produce and turning them into food products is the key activity here, which adds value to the raw produce, Rajib further explained.

Basic processing techniques like drying is the most commonly used method, because that is what the marginal farmers can easily do without any large investment. 

However, in the case of dried tomatoes, the produce is boiled with salt before drying to boost its cancer-fighting ability. Making tomato purée, too, requires a little more effort.  

During and after receiving the training, participants have made a number of food products. Among them are dried ginger, aamchur (dried green mango powder), bori (sun dried pellets made with pumpkin and black gram), dried green chilli, tomato purée, etc. 

Around 300 participants from different districts including Meherpur, Dinajpur, Rangpur, Patuakhali and Faridpur received training through nine local NGOs, and an even larger number of people have participated in the value chain in different capacities. At this phase, a total of 10 districts are coming under this project.

Trainees themselves calculated the production cost and determined the price of the products. Different organisations marketed these products.

The project is at its initial phase, but the response is encouraging, Rajib said. 

"There is a growing demand for dried products among the urbanites. These are now sold at super shops and also used at restaurants. For example, these local producers sold dried ginger for Tk700 per kg, while ginger was bought at the peak of the season at Tk60 to Tk70. This signalled a high potential for the value chain," Rajib said.

"In fact, different international organisations, in the past, undertook projects to train farmers in food processing and preservation. But without targeting a specific consumer base, a value chain could not be created, and those efforts did not succeed," continued Rajib. 

A complete value chain is crucial, he said.

The project has found its customers and retailers. One of them is Dhaka-based 'Fargo' – an 'organic grocery store' with a stated goal of supplying organic, safe and nutritious food.

"Bangladesh stands in a lower tier in terms of food safety and quality. As a consequence, cancer, liver disease, kidney failure, etc are on the rise," Hamidul H Khan, the CEO of Fargo told The Business Standard. Fargo works with farmers and different organisations to improve the poor food safety situation in the country.  

But there are challenges, he said. "When you ensure compliance, safety, and nutrition in food products, the prices rise naturally. But our mainstream customers are not ready to accept the elevated price."

Still, the demand for safe food is increasing, the Fargo CEO said while praising the initiative, which intends to train and prepare the farmers for building a safe-food future. 

"What Rajib is doing is unique, he has been creating an agricultural movement from the grassroots level. This will benefit the farmers, because they will get a fair price as they are sending the products directly to us," said Hamidul H Khan. 

"Also, in this process, awareness is growing among the farmers about food safety issues. This way, an ecosystem of safe food will be built which will have a positive impact on public health," he concluded.

The local producers see a ray of hope too.

"We will get a better price, and our hard-produced crops will not get ruined anymore," said Shukla Rani.