Speeches Shim
This risk and resilience capacity assessment seeks to inform the USAID Bangladesh Country Development and Cooperation Strategy, future program design, and current program implementation. The intended audience is USAID Bangladesh, its partners, and other stakeholders.
Millions of smallholder farmers in South and Southeast Asia are attempting to diversify beyond staple crops to increase their incomes, nutrition, and resilience in response to climate change and shifting market demand. Although they are potentially significant producers of fresh vegetables and farmed fish, most smallholders lack access to technologies that would help them produce the quantities and quality needed to earn income sustainably. To address this, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) rolled out its new Feed the Future Asia Regional Innovative Farmers Project at the Agriculture Innovation Summit in Dhaka today. Implemented by Winrock International, the regional project will increase food security, reduce poverty, and improve environmental sustainability by facilitating agricultural innovation and technology diffusion in several countries in Asia including Bangladesh.
Due to a lack of awareness and application of proper safety measures while handling pesticides, farmers’ health in Bangladesh is often unnecessarily put at risk. In cases of exposure to pesticides, farmers need expedient and effective medical attention. Emergency room doctors face many pesticide-exposed patients who need proper medical support within the first hour in order to reduce further health hazards.
Oliar Rahman Firoj has been farming summer tomatoes in southern Bangladesh over the past three years. He dedicates his acre of land to cultivating this high-value crop, which commands prices four-to-five times higher than winter tomato varieties. However, the initial investment for this crop is also higher as the farmer needs to purchase heat-tolerant varieties of tomato seeds, install raised beds and rain shelters, and learn integrated crop management techniques, such as pruning, staking, sanitation, and curbing disease and pests.
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