Rice-duck farming: new opportunities for farmers in Bangladesh

Helping farmers to learn and adopt environmentally friendly cultivation techniques is important for developing sustainable agriculture. Policymakers need to understand how cultivation techniques spread and identify the challenges involved in increasing the scale of these.

Research from the Bangladesh Rice ResearchInstitute (BRRI) and Friends in Village Development Bangladesh (FIVDB) reportson their experience of introducing integrated rice-duck farming, a new conceptin Bangladesh where farmers rear ducks in paddy fields. This diversifies thefarmers’ food supply and income sources.

Rice-duck farming is a low-cost, organic method(no herbicides, insecticides or chemical fertilisers are needed) suitable forsmall-scale farmers. In experiments, rice yields increased by an average of 20percent. Furthermore, duck eggs and meat not only increased food for farmers,but also provided them with cash. The challenge was then to introduce theconcept to more farmers.

BRRI-FIVDB initially promoted the idea tofarmers in Sylhet, Bangladesh. Most farmers farm rice and ducks separately,fearing that ducks would harm their rice crops. Farmers also saw dangers in thenew system: they would need more time to manage ducks and they would need toeat purchased supplementary feed during some periods of the year. However,cost-benefit analysis, including a promotional video, showed that the increasein cash income would outweigh the increased costs.

BRRI teamed up with FIVDB, a nationalnon-governmental organisation (NGO), because they had considerable expertise induck rearing and establishing duckling production units. FIVDB collaboratedwith a local NGO, the Barisal Development Society (BDS) to establish rice-ducksystems in three districts. BDS played an important role in networking withother NGOs, private sector organisations and government institutions andbuilding partnerships to develop a model of rice-duck farming that would workin Bangladesh.

The research identifies important lessons aboutthis model:

• Rice-duck farming will only work insuitable ecosystems, where duck rearing and paddy cultivation already existside-by-side.
• A reliable supply of ducklings isimportant. A small-scale duckling production unit helped to overcome problemswith unreliable supply from government duckling farms. More hatcheries areplanned.
• Access to vaccines is also needed. Thegovernment is the only supplier, so good contact with government institutionsis essential for obtaining vaccines.
• Farmers may require some financialsupport to embark on rice-duck farming.
• Farmers may need credit to set uphousehold duckling production units.
• Rice and duck farmers need specifictraining to integrate the two methods successfully.

Rice-duck farming is a new concept so extensionsystems must develop the skills and knowledge of both service providers andfarmers in all elements of the production system. The research recommends:

• Experienced farmers could train othersand convince them to overcome bias against integrating rice and duck systems.
• Future experiments should evaluate thebenefits of integrated rice-duck farming to whole communities.
• Organisations considering promotingrice-duck production must select partner organisations carefully and establishreliable sources of credit, vaccines and ducklings.