How Sumi Howlader of Bagerhat Is Bringing Life Back to Farmland
Climate change and other factors are hitting agriculture in Bangladesh hard. Shifting weather patterns are bringing more frequent droughts, heatwaves and floods. The result is water scarcity, lower soil and crop productivity, and higher production costs. Farm prices rise and ordinary people feel the pressure. With costs growing faster than yields, farmers apply excessive chemical fertilizer and pesticide to recover their investment. This damages the soil badly and erodes its fertility, which puts the country's agriculture sector at serious risk. The government has launched several projects to restore soil fertility.
As part of this effort, vermicompost, or earthworm compost, has changed the fortunes of many entrepreneurs in Bagerhat, a coastal district known as Bangladesh's saltwater region. One of them is Sumi Howlader of Mansa village in Bahirdia Union, Fakirhat Upazila. The 35-year-old, abandoned by her husband, lives with her two sons on a small plot of land. After her husband left four years ago to marry again, she and her children sometimes went hungry. To bring stability back to the family, she decided to produce vermicompost.
Sumi says: "After my husband left four years ago, I built two ring plants for vermicompost in the yard of our home with help from the Fakirhat agriculture office. At first the compost didn't sell and I was in trouble. Then I started advertising it on social media, and the response was good. NGOs, hobby gardeners, local farmers and others began coming to buy. I first sold it at 12 taka per kilogram. Now I sell it at 15 taka. I earn about 15,000 to 16,000 taka a month."
Asked how she makes it, Sumi says: "First I collect cow dung from cattle farms and sheds nearby. I put it in the plant with rotted grass and release 200 to 300 earthworms into it. Compost production starts within 15 to 30 days. The worms eat the dung and grass, and what they excrete is sieved through a hand-turned machine to make the compost."
Sumi now has 50 ring plants. Farmers who use her compost on rice and vegetables have seen good results. She wants to build 50 more.
Her elder son, Samiul Alim, is in class six at a local school and helps his mother between studies. He says many neighbors have built worm compost plants after seeing theirs.
Neighbor Pradip Pal says: "Following Sumi, I built two ring plants at my house. I use the compost on my own land. I have my own cows, so making it is easy. I use it on vegetables and rice. This year I also used it in my betel leaf garden and got good results. Many people in our village now use this compost in their betel leaf gardens and see good results."
According to the Bagerhat office of the Department of Agricultural Extension, vermicompost is used to increase soil fertility. Earthworms eat stale cow dung or grass and excrete it. Together with chemicals released from their bodies, this makes the fertilizer called worm compost or vermicompost. It is a simple method that uses cow dung a month old, and the compost can be used on all kinds of crops. Vermicompost increases the soil's water retention and aeration, which raises fertility. It can multiply crop yield and quality while lowering cultivation costs, and the color, taste and smell of the produce become more appealing.
Main Materials
200 to 300 earthworms, a clay trough or a brick-built tank, and one-month-old cow dung.
How to Make It
Build a brick tank 2 meters long, 1 meter wide and 1 meter deep, with a tin or straw roof over it. Fill the tank with stale, rotted cow dung, then release 200 to 300 earthworms. The worms eat the dung and excrete the compost. The time depends on the number of worms, and more worms make compost faster. Worm compost looks like tea dust. Once it is ready, carefully take it out of the tank and sieve it with a machine or a hand sieve, taking care not to kill the baby worms. Return the baby worms to the stale dung in the tank to make more compost. Protect the worms from ants, termites, cockroaches, chickens, rats, water and insect bites. If needed, cover the tank with a mosquito net.
Where to Use It
Vermicompost raises yields in all kinds of vegetable fields. It also gives good yields in rice, wheat, jute and fruit orchards. It increases soil fertility and aeration, improves water retention, and removes toxicity from the soil. It boosts microbial activity, so plants draw more nutrients from the soil. With it, only half the usual quantity of chemical fertilizer is needed. Used in ponds, it speeds up phytoplankton growth and can increase fish production.
Shankar Kumar Majumdar, Deputy Director of the Bagerhat District Department of Agricultural Extension, says vermicompost improves crop yield and quality and lowers farming costs, and that produce has a more appealing color, taste and smell. "Through various projects, the agriculture department is training farmers to make vermicompost. Women are the most eager. They set up ring plants at home and produce the compost easily. This makes women self-reliant and raises their household income."
He added that Bagerhat has a target of producing 4,560 metric tons of compost this year, of which 256 metric tons have already been produced.
Charts and interactives by Coastal Voices. All figures come from the reporting above.
