Bijoy Mondal, Son of Supada and Akadoshi Mondal, lives in Jelekhali villege in Munshigonj union of Satkhira district. He maintaining a family with four members. They are living here with hand to mouth in his 160 decimals of patrimony land. Though Bijoy’s have have 160 decimals land, but he can produce crop once in a year, because the ground water is saline. Moreover the area flooded in cyclone AILA in 2009 and his land got saline. Due to salinity, saline ground water, irregular rainfall and lack of knowledge to management of rainwater, the crop production were hampered almost every year. For that it was very difficult to run the family with small piece of land in this disaster prone area. To maintain his family, he goes other area to sell labor.
LEDARS started to implement a project entitled ‘Strengthening Livelihood Security of Climate Change Vulnerable People’ with support Bread for the World, Germany. The main objective of this project is to improve quality of life climate vulnerable people through enhancing climate resilience in agriculture sector. Mr. Bijoy Mondal involved as member of our ‘Climate Resilient Group’. As member he received training on adaptive paddy and vegetable cultivation and took part of an exchange visit in Dumuria Khulna in 2013. He regularly attain the fortnightly mobilization meeting, farmers innovation fair and another project related activities. He got idea to develop a plot on integrated farming (multiple cultivation of paddy, vegetable and) to optimum utilization of rainwater by making dyke and canal in his land. But this is an new idea and sometimes he lose interest to do this, because it need some capital. Finally he started his farm but did not profit first time because of the week infrastructure. Then LEDARS inspired him to innovative cultivation and provide grant to establish an ideal demonstration firm. Besides this LEDARS provided technical knowledge on adaptive agriculture, seed, organic fertilizer and regular monitoring. With our financial assistance, he invested 80,000 taka in his farm.
Now he is a success farmer in this area. In 2014, he profits 200,000 taka. Now he is selling 60 kgs of vegetable daily from his farm. Recently he bought 60 decimals of land. 3 day laborers working in his farm. His son is studying in school. He is grateful to LEDARS for support. He desires that his son will be an agriculturist.
