BADARKHALI, Bangladesh, OCTOBER 17 (IPS) – A barefoot young man in rolled-up jeans holds a laptop computer as he slips through a muddy narrow path in the middle of rice paddies one morning. drizzly late September afternoon. He is rushing to help a farming couple who are having trouble with their duck flock in a coastal village in southern Bangladesh.
A middle-aged couple, Rafiq Mridha and Nupur Akhter, run a small 0.5 hectare farm in a district adjacent to the Bay of Bengal. Over the past year, they have made huge profits and repaired the damage caused by natural disasters in recent years, including the powerful storm Sidr, which tore through the country devastating many counties 15 years ago. .
Like Mridha and Akhter, hundreds of villagers in Badarkhali, an area consisting of three villages hit hard by climate change, were made miserable overnight by Sidr but are living a life amazing thanks to the emergence of digital technology.
Faced with any dilemma, villagers can now call their local digital service center, which provides helpful information on a variety of topics, from growing and selling crops to growing and selling crops. Get local weather forecast.
Akhter told IPS: “For any problem, we first try to find a solution by using our smartphone connected to the internet and in case of failure we will call people at the digital hub,” Akhter told IPS. Get support through mobile apps. “Digital hub has eased our lives and made our business profitable,” she added.
Akhter said she called the digital center to ask about her ducks when she couldn’t figure out why some chickens’ egg production was dropping. Young man crossing rice fields with HM Ranju laptop, dispatched from digital hub. He searched the internet for common causes of low egg-laying rates and advised farmers to observe if ducks are eating properly and change the feed if they are healthy.
The problem is potentially serious – every morning all year round, the couple makes 700-800 taka (US$7-8) from selling duck eggs. “We are trying to expand the farm regularly,” said Mridha. “We’ve got over 100 ducks and we’ve ordered more ducklings for eggs,” adding they made $14,800 from the farm last year.
The couple also raise fish and cows on the farm along with growing a variety of vegetables. Mridha notes: “As the business is going well, we are planning to build a brick house for ourselves next year.
At a call run by the digital service center, worker Laboni Akhter said most of the questions were related to feed and fertilizer or how to control pests. “We use different types of apps to provide solutions to people’s questions,” she added.
When a village woman came to the center with a photo of a spotted spinach leaf infected with a fungus, Laboni consulted with several applications and determined it was some kind of blight. She told the woman to use a fungicide to control it. “If the case is severe, we will refer people to the district agricultural or veterinary officers,” Laboni said.
In recent years, most Badarkhali villagers, who previously made a living by fishing in the Bay of Bengal or nearby rivers, find it difficult and risky to continue their ancestors’ craft because of the changing climate. change. They chose to start raising fish in the pond in their village.
Working together to develop their fish farming business, the fishermen formed a cooperative in 2005 with the help of a Danish government project. The emergence of digital information technology with the support of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has spurred further business development.
Locals have expanded their livelihoods and now almost every household also cultivates and raises livestock while Badarkhali today is known as a digital village.
“We have developed our digital service hubs… we connect with each other and with farmers in other districts across the country,” said Cooperation Chairman Mohammad Gafur Mia, also a public representative. of Badarkhali said. “We share information to grow our business and maximize profits.”
The cooperative operates two digital service centers, one in a village and the other in a marketplace where people can pay to learn to operate computers and popular digital technologies. The hubs are equipped with three desktop computers, a laptop, three tablets, a printer and a scanner.
FAO has launched the 1,000 Global Digital Villages Initiative in Bangladesh to promote digital technology to support inclusive, gender-sensitive rural development and sustainable agricultural transformation to meet the goals of the 2030 Agenda.
A global initiative inspired by FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu, DVI is being piloted in the Asia-Pacific region. Badarkhali is one of nearly 60 villages in Bangladesh that are being showcased and sharing their progress with other villages and regions in the Asia-Pacific and other parts of the world.
The UN organization works closely with the government and the Sara Bangla Krishak Society, a network of farmers across the country. FAO Coordinator, Mohammad Abu Hanif, said: “FAO is providing technological support to the villagers.
Recalling Sidr’s horror in 2007, the villagers of Badarkhali said all their farms were completely destroyed by the tidal wave washing everything away. “Most people in the area cannot even save a pot to cook food,” said Mohammad Ali Hossain. In the years that followed, the village faced more tornadoes, though not as severe as Sidr’s.
“We now use our digital devices to monitor the weather forecast and know what to do to survive any hardships,” said Ali Hossain.
Many residents told IPS that there has been a major change in the region following the arrival of digital technology and that they expect other positive changes, such as improved rural governance and improved service. They also believe that the FAO initiative will bridge the digital divide between people in rural and urban areas.
Mosammat Mahmuda says she recently replaced her shabby cottage with a brick house with the profits from her fish and poultry farming. The cooperative gave her a loan to start a business. “The chance of a loss is very small because the digital service center provides support to keep fish and poultry safe from disease and also to find a market where we can sell our products with,” she said. competitive price.
Once, noticing that her fish was not growing at a normal rate, she sought advice from the centre. It told her she was keeping too many fish in a small area, so she quickly moved some to other nearby ponds. The problem has been resolved.
Another villager, Mohammad Shah Alam, said the digital service center is very important during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic when the whole country is under lockdown, another villager, Mohammad Shah Alam said. “Our traditional market is closed and we are not used to virtual marketing, but our digital service center has arranged buyers for our products,” he said.
Many villagers felt that they would face great loss if no arrangements were made.
Osim Roy, general secretary of the cooperative, said that only members are allowed to receive loans from the organization but any villager can access all other services from the technical centers. digital by paying a small fee. “In addition to farm-related advice, people at the digital hub can also pay their electricity and other bills and fill out any government online form, mainly to register for a tax return. birth, death or finding a job,” he said.
Before the center opened, residents had to travel four kilometers to the market to get these services. “Sometimes, we even go to people’s homes to deliver services,” says Roy.
© Inter Press Service (2022) – All rights reservedOrigin: Inter Press Service
