Diversifying Rice-based Systems and Empowering Farmers in Bangladesh 189high adoption rates of the new practices make it clear that they make economic
sense.
Non-economic Benefits
Measurable economic returns represent only a fraction of the benefits generated by
the programme. Households and communities also benefit from improved nutri-
tion, decreased environmental degradation and empowerment.
Nutrition
Our indicators of diet show that the project contributes significantly to improving
project participants’ nutrition. The project is helping to reduce over-reliance on
rice by increasing vegetable and fish consumption. We find that after project inter-
vention, the relative number of project households consuming vegetables every
day doubled while those consuming vegetables only once a week decreased 12-fold.
Similarly, the number of households consuming fish every day more than doubled
while those consuming fish only once a week decreased nine-fold. And lastly, the
amount of edible oil used by households – a good indicator of the total amount of
food cooked – increased by 21 per cent on average.
Environment
It is well established that simply foregoing the use of insecticide dramatically
increases the abundance of beneficial insects and will reduce farmers’ and consum-
ers’ exposure to hazardous chemicals (Pingali and Gerpacio, 1997). The reduced
reliance on insecticide is long lasting. Our post-project survey shows that even
two-and-half years after project intervention, 77 per cent of participating farmers
(n = 1200 farmers) continue to grow rice during the dry season – the high input
season – without using insecticides, a long-term change up from 14 per cent before
project intervention (n = 400 farmers). Another intervention with a probably sig-
nificant impact on environmental sustainability is the planting of trees on dykes.
Trees add a structural dimension to the rice field and provide refuge to many life
forms. The data set just mentioned also shows that two-and-a-half years after
phase-out, 41 per cent of FFS participants (n = 1200 farmers) still have trees grow-
ing on some of their dykes, a technique totally unknown before project interven-
tion (Barzman and Banu, 2000).
Empowerment
Through farmer involvement, the programme hopes to strengthen the capacity of
farmers and their communities to continue to innovate and to respond to future