Floating seedbeds a win for Kishoreganj farmers

Sometimes the best technology comes from the past. Floating seedbeds are a traditional agricultural method used in parts of Barisal for many generations. Recently the farming system has been introduced to Kishoreganj. There, farmers in the haor wetland areas are struggling to cope with unusually high water levels resulting from this year's flooding. Floating seedbeds are proving invaluable in helping farmers to adapt.

"I have prepared two floating seedbeds," says Mollick Mia, a farmer from Sekepara village in Kotiadi upazila. "It cost around Tk 1,000 to carry the mud for the beds. I have planted vegetables and so far the seedlings are healthier than the ones grown in the usual way."

Landless farmer Fayez Uddin from Chang Sholaki village in Kishoreganj Sadar upazila has also adopted the system. "I started with a floating vegetable garden this year," he says, "and the vegetables are growing really well."

The benefits of floating seedbeds are potentially even greater with respect to Aman rice crops. In the haor areas it is often difficult for farmers to prepare regular seedbeds in time for the Aman season, due to excess water. The floating beds, made of banana plants, mud and rotten hyacinth have the potential to ensure Aman seedlings are ready for transplanting in time, when regular paddy fields are no longer fully submerged.

"Aman saplings are in high demand in Kishoreganj," says farmer and neighbour, Dulal Mia.

"These could also be grown commercially on the floating seedbeds for good profits."

"With the support of agriculture department officials," says Mongol Mia, another farmer from Kotiadi upazila, "I am thinking of trying cultivation of Aman rice as well as vegetables on floating seedbeds from next year."

According to the Department of Agriculture Extension, as many as 67 Kishoreganj farmers across eight upazilas have prepared 146 floating seedbeds this year, with Aman seeds provided for free under the environment ministry's 'Climate Change Agriculture' project.

The seedlings grown on floating beds take only twenty days to be ready for transplanting, a process that would require up to thirty days in a regular farm field.

"During the rainy season farmers in Kishoreganj usually have very little work," says Kotiadi upazila's sub-assistant agriculture officer Mohammad Moezuddin. "The floating beds have changed that. They are being used to grow vegetables and spices prior to the Aman paddy season, and because the hyacinth in the beds is good manure, farming on floating seedbeds does not require chemical fertiliser."

“Floating seedbeds have commercial potential in flood-prone areas right across greater Mymensingh," says Dilruba Yasmin, the agriculture officer in Kishoreganj Sadar upazila. "This technology could provide work for many landless farmers and other unemployed locals."