Martha Achary, 45, and her team members were irrigating the farm on a winter morning in November. The farm is surrounded and covered by a thick blue net. Next to the farm are two large water drums in which 5,000 litres of water were stored during the monsoon. Every morning and afternoon, the vegetables on the farm are irrigated with the water stored in the drums.
“Soil and water are saline. There are no freshwater reservoirs. Because of this, it was not possible to grow vegetables at home. Vegetable farms were burned by the salinity. It was not possible to grow vegetables in houses. We grow vegetables this way to avoid the salinity. This way we can meet most of the family’s vegetable needs,” Martha Achari explains the reasons for the alternative vegetable cultivation.
The story comes from Baradal village in Assashuni upazila (sub-district) of Satkhira district on the south-west coast of Bangladesh. The women of the Christian quarter of this village have taken up this extraordinary initiative of collective vegetable farming. Martha Achari leads this team. This group of women rents a 5-decimal piece of land from a villager and practices innovative farming called ‘hydroponics’. In this method, the whole land is surrounded by a thin, dense net. Vegetables are grown in clay pots. Biofertilizers are used in the pots to prevent soil salinization. Rainwater stored in the vegetable fields is used instead of salt water.
Not only Martha Achari from Baradal village and her team members, but also many other women from Assashuni upazila are involved in such innovative agricultural methods.
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