Poor farmer, entrepreneurs and ICT relation in production & marketing of quality vegetables in Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh is a country where people mostly depend on agriculture. The crop sub-sector of agriculture mainly depends on extensive agrochemicals to increase production and to ensure the national food security. Although, farmers have been using agrochemicals, the production was still found not to increase significantly due to the lack of knowledge about proper and modern cultivation technology. In addition, farmers are getting less income from agriculture compared to another profession, because of the inconsistent price of agricultural produces between the rural and urban area. In order to improve the situation, Kyushu University has conducted JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) grassroots technical cooperation project which aims at income generation for BOP (Bottom of Pyramid) farmers by producing and marketing the chemical free quality vegetables using ICT (Information and Communication Technology). The project has been conducted in five rural areas in Bangladesh. Here, the farmers are producing vegetables under a quality vegetable management center (QVMC) which is well equipped with ICT tools, and a quality vegetable entrepreneur (QVE) is helping them regularly to get the desired production and also ensuring the marketing of such vegetables. The project has targeted 100 farmers for producing chemical free vegetables and already got 42 interested farmers in 1.5 years of time. It is observed that farmers get better production under this QVMC in the winter season (called "Rabi" in Bangladesh) than summer season (called "Kharif-1" in Bangladesh).