By Mofijur Rahman from Shyamnagar, Satkhira
The coastal belt of Bangladesh, especially Shyamnagar in Satkhira is scarred by salinity, drought, waterlogging, and a constant shortage of fresh water. Agriculture here is a battle for survival. While many farmers are abandoning their fields, Achia Begum from Kamalkati village has chosen a different way. She has planted seeds of hope in saline soil and built a story of resilience.
In 2020, Achia’s homestead was selected under BARCIK’s “Nutrition Bank” initiative, locally known as Shatobari. In Kamalkati, a village surrounded by shrimp ponds and saline water, where most people have lost faith in farming, Achia has held on to agriculture as the lifeline of her family’s nutrition and survival.
Her yard now thrives with fruit and timber trees such as mango, banana, coconut, guava, amloki, black plum, wood apple, arjun, and mahogany. Alongside them stand vegetable plots, supported with nets, bamboo poles, cement pillars, and a government-installed deep tube-well she accessed through BARCIK’s facilitation. These resources gave her farming new strength.
Year-round, Achia cultivates vegetables such as eggplant, red spinach, cabbage, fennel, sweet potato, chili, bottle gourd, beans, spinach, and ambalmadhu. Beyond meeting her family’s needs, she sold vegetables worth nearly 4,500 taka. Her four goats also get their fodder from the homestead fields.
She now preserves her own seeds and distributes them to neighbors. Twenty farmers have benefited from her fields, while twelve received seed support during the rainy season. Her Shatobari also hosts regular farmer discussions, training on organic pest management, and trials of Trichoderma-based fertilizer. Visitors come to see her plots and seek advice, creating a space of learning and community bonding. Even when heavy rains damaged her rainy-season crops, she did not give up. She quickly replanted seeds and revived her vegetable garden.
Today, Achia Begum of Kamalkati stands as a farmer and a brave symbol of survival in saline environments. Her Shatobari is more than a homestead; actually it is a model of nutrition security, local biodiversity conservation, and social harmony. With BARCIK’s support and her own determination, her home has become a powerful example of rebuilding agriculture-based livelihoods in the coastal belt. Achia’s success shines as an inspiration for others, especially for farmers who seek to build resilient, nutrition-focused, and sustainable agriculture in vulnerable regions.
