Mr. Mike Robson, FAO Representative in Bangladesh has met the group of farmers in his office today, upon their return from a nine (9) days long study tour and training workshop from India.
The tour programme in India was initiated by FAO Project, titled “Integrated Agriculture Development Programme for Agro-ecologically Constrained and Economically Depressed Areas Technical Assistance Component: Capacity Development in Agriculture and Food Security Investment Programmes (IAPP)”. Mr. Mahmud Hossain, Team Leader of the respective project headed the mission and the farmer group was consisted of twelve (12) farmers from Barisal and Rangpur, Bangladesh.
The team started off its mission on 26 November 2014 and returned to Bangladesh on 5 December 2014, after having participated in multi-lateral activities across Delhi, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal of India. In the meeting with Mr. Robson, the farmers expressed their gratitude to FAO for this enormous learning opportunity abroad and a chance to enhance their livelihood along with their community with the acquired knowledge. During this meticulous discussion and experience sharing with the FAO representative in Bangladesh, farmers also indicated that, with the given support from FAO, they like to implement their learning in their village and they are fully committed to the programme. Mr. Robson also inquired about their feedback on the whole initiative by FAO and he particularly, thanked the particularly the team leader and the rest of the team to make the cumulative effort a successful one.
The farmer group from Bangladesh has experienced the Seed Village Programme for the first time, through this initiative. The main objective of the seed village programme is to enhance the self-sufficiency in seed production as the cumulative and unified effort from each village. The farmers had visited four (4) models and ten (10) spots and got into various interactive learning programmes during their stay in India.
The farmer group also came across different research institutions, farmer organizations who have been working on similar mechanism, universities, seed multiplication centers as well as National Seed Corporation (NSC) while they were travelling across the four states in India.