Deepa Joshi, Anna Panagiotou and M. Wakilur Rahman
Introduction
With a population density that is the highest in the world (Landlinks n.d.), persistent poverty and food insecurity (IPC Bangladesh 2022), and as the seventh-most climate vulnerable country in the world (Eckstein et al. 2021), Bangladesh has little choice but to intensify its crop production. Little over 40 percent of the country’s population is fully occupied in agriculture, primarily in rice production (Islam et al. 2020), 92 percent of the farming community are smallholders (BBS 2019), and 75 percent of the country’s population is either landless or own less than 0.5 hectares (ha) of land on average per household. On such small plots of land, even triple-cropping under irrigation does not translate into adequate incomes or food security (Landlinks n.d.). Going forward, if agriculture is to be inclusive, much of the planned agricultural intensification will need to happen in the fields of smallholder farmers.
However, the adoption of new technologies and agricultural innovations is low among smallholder farmers (Alam et al. 2024), particularly among women farmers (Rashid et al. 2018; Radović et al. 2020; Medendorp et al. 2022). There are several factors contributing to exclusions in agricultural extension services and interventions. Amongst smallholder farmers, the systemic, structural barriers that are adversely impacting productivity and incomes from agriculture include intragenerational declines in plot sizes and distress sale of land and livestock due to increasing climate change impacts, which also translate into unequal competition for water and other related resources. Poor productivity and profitability in smallholder, agrifood systems-based livelihoods result in seasonal migration of mostly adult men as a coping strategy, especially in the more severely climate-impacted southern coastal regions (Chowdhury et al. 2022; Lam et al. 2022).
All the above challenges, now intensified by climate change, are shaping an increasing feminization of agriculture in Bangladesh (Crawford School of Public Policy n.d.). However, low levels of literacy, the lack of social mobility, mandatory female exclusion in public (due to the practice of purdah), the dual burdens of domestic and productive work, and cultural norms that invisibilize them constrain women from engaging in, and benefiting from agricultural extension services. For example, recent research in Bangladesh found that women’s participation as trainees in agricultural extension events can be as low as 7 percent (Medendorp et al. 2022). The affordability of extension services and products is also a factor in the limited reach of agricultural extension services, and low risk-taking behavior among marginalized smallholder farmers is a direct outcome of their high vulnerability (Adnan et al. 2023).
To get contextual insights into diverse experiences of vulnerability, access to, and gains from agricultural extension services, and how women and men perceive challenges, risks, and opportunities in their agriculturerelated work, we conducted two rounds of scoping studies, in 2023 and 2024 respectively, in Polder 34/2 of Batiaghata Upazila, Khulna District, Bangladesh. Our findings show that, in Bangladesh’s unique social context, it is imperative that agricultural extension services are designed to ensure more inclusive outcomes that can tackle poverty, food insecurity, unplanned migration, and other challenges that Bangladesh’s marginalized smallholder farmers face, and to take account of farmers’ actual practices and desires, rather than trying to transmit a predetermined model. For this to take place, increased coordination with, and channeling know-how via locally-based extension agents might be essential.
In Bangladesh, agricultural extension services were initially a function of public institutions. More recently, there has been an increasing engagement of private entities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (Faure et al. 2016). While public extension agents are still primary providers of inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, irrigation pumps, and machinery to farming communities at subsidized rates (Bokhtiar and Samsuzzaman 2023), public and private actors, including traders and marketing agents, increasingly serve as crucial intermediaries in disseminating information about agricultural inputs and new farming practices (Mittal et al. 2018; Kabir and Islam 2023 ).
As part of our methodology, we conducted extensive discussions with public extension services actors in Batiaghata Upazila, Khulna District and in Dhaka. Recent research signals the lack of collaboration, and even conflict between multiple agricultural extension stakeholders, which can result in contradictory choices and diverse outcomes for farmers (Rashid et al. 2018; KGF 2020; FPMU 2021; Rahman et al. 2023). There are claims that private dealers and retailers encourage farmers to apply more, and random amounts of fertilizers and pesticides, something also reflected in the stories shared by extension agents in this project. However, private sector engagement in agricultural extension services, which happened due to decreasing government investments in these services, is set to increase in Bangladesh (Medendorp et al. 2022). In a workshop organized with agricultural extension staff, NGOs, and other actors in May 2024, participants pointed out that most of the official agricultural extension work increasingly happens through funded projects due to budget restrictions, which results in a piecemeal approach to extension services, preventing the attention needed for more complex, integrated challenges or 360-degree, long-term support. The discussions also pointed to a serious lack of trained, skilled extension services staff in numbers needed to reach diverse groups of marginalized smallholders, especially those who are illiterate, underresourced, and living in more remote locations. In sum, the problems and challenges lie both at the service provider and user ends of the agricultural extension system.