By Ranjit Barmon from Shyamnagar, Satkhira
After marriage, Kanika Rani found herself in a struggling family dependent solely on her husband’s small income. With the aim to improve their situation, she and her husband decided to cultivate vegetables year-round in their homestead and lease 10 decimals of land annually for paddy cultivation.
Today, Kanika, a 38-year-old farmer from Pankhali village in Burigoalini Union, Shyamnagar upazila of Satkhira, has become an example of resilience and success through environment-friendly nature based farming. With support from her husband and mother-in-law, she grows diverse vegetables such as potato, tomato, eggplant, pumpkin, bean, spinach, radish, cucumber, chili, onion, garlic, turmeric, and mustard.
Kanika manages her one bigha homestead and four bigha fields where she grows vegetables and paddy, raises livestock, and conserves seeds. Her husband, Himangshu Mondol, is both a farmer and a local homeopathic practitioner. Through integrated and organic farming, she meets her family’s food and nutrition needs and reduces dependence on the market.
In her homestead, Kanika conserves rich biodiversity, including fruit and forest trees like mango, jackfruit, banana, coconut, guava, lemon, papaya, tamarind, olive, and rain tree. She has also established a small medicinal garden with plants such as tulsi, aloe vera, neem, patharkuchi, and madhabilata for primary healthcare.
Through practicing diverse, climate-resilient nature based farming, Kanika Rani has ensured food security and improved her family’s livelihood which proves that sustainable agriculture is key to adapting to climate change in coastal Bangladesh.
