by Faisal Ibney Hai, Department of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo
This column focuses on the small scale initiatives taken locally within different communities for sustainable development. Local initiatives usually do not enjoy much coverage in international media; those rather remain in the pages of local newspapers and eventually pass into oblivion. Our aim is to convey to you instances of such endeavors.
Let us visit a small village situated in a district called Tangail, which is 130 kilometers away from Dhaka- the capital city of Bangladesh. There lies a small shop with a signboard which reads “Pesticide Store†. The shop remains open from morning till late evening, but the owner does not earn a cent from this shop, and pesticides are not sold here!
The customer will experience something quite unexpected. The owner of that shop himself terms the pesticides as “lethal poison†. His perception is simple- the chemical that kills insects are also capable of doing harm to the human body. He passionately urges the people not to use such poison. It does not stop here. He, without any consultancy fee, provides the people with ideas to control pests without using pesticides!
When approached, this shop owner politely introduces himself as “Farmer Abdul Aziz†, but the people call him “Aziz Company†out of affection. It is a story that you have got to listen to.
Not only the inhabitants of the small village where “Farmer Abdul Aziz†lives in, farmers from the surrounding areas also seek his advice. Some contact him through telephone- a recently introduced facility which has revolutionized the communication system in rural Bangladesh. Some even come to collect young plants. The one thing that Aziz stresses during his conversation with anyone, is that it is neither safe nor beneficial to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides to enhance crop production or to control pests. Abdul Aziz also advises people to plant fruit-bearing trees, because those, unlike the wild trees providing only wood, will in the long run provide both fruit and wood. He laments that the forest adjacent to his locality used to contain a wealth of different fruit trees and medicinal plants along with the characteristic wood producing trees.
The local Department of Forestry promoted plantation of foreign trees and, in the process, rendered the indigenous plants and trees to be extinct. Aziz loves fruit so much that once he spent a whole month exploring only fruit to prove that people could live off fruits! He does not pick any fruit from some of his trees to allow the birds to collect food. Consciousness about environmental conservation as well as love for his fellow people prompts Aziz to distribute young plants free of cost. He visits the schools to deliver fruits grown in his own garden to the children. Not only that, he owns a market where only the fruits grown on natural manure are sold. Whenever a farmer delivers fruit to that market, he receives a young lemon plant as a gift.
The birth of todayâ€TMs Aziz dates back 22 years. Aziz used to be a truck driver in the capital city of Dhaka. One day he bought some ripe mangoes from a road-side vendor. Later, when he cut one nice looking mango, he, to his utter surprise, found that the fruit was still immature and the seed was still soft. He realized it had been ripened artificially. He set out to find out how it was done. His strong determination compelled one business man to disclose the secret- they used chemicals to change the external appearances of the young fruits.
This incident entirely shook his reality. He left his job and returned to his village. This was at a time when chemical fertilizers and pesticides had just been introduced and people were ecstatic about their ‘advantagesâ€TM. Aziz shared with the farmers his views about the hazards associated with the use of artificial chemicals for agricultural production, but only to receive a inadequate response. He was, however, not a person to be bogged down. Only using natural manure, he himself started cultivating bananas. This was the first attempt of cultivating bananas in the local barren land of hilly texture. He adopted a natural process utilizing nets to control pests. Instead of spraying hormones on the fruits- a process which only changes their external appearance but is injurious to human health, he used natural methods to ripen the fruits. The rest is history. Aziz now owns large orchards comprising varieties of fruits. Many people work in his farm. He is always punctual in paying their salary- a practice not so common in rural Bangladesh. The villagers think that only a company can provide salary so timely, which is the reason why they call him “Aziz Company†! Many people have joined hands with Aziz now. The sole endeavor of Aziz has now transpired in to a combined effort. The people have already started to reap the fruit of this ‘green revolutionâ€TM. The pesticide merchants of that locality, on the other hand, admit that their sale is on the decline. “Farmer Aziz†is happy with the developments, but not contented yet. He spends half of his yearly income in order to distribute young plants free of cost, and whenever he finds time he moves around the village to spread knowledge about the toxicity of the artificial pesticides.
This is really an example of a commendable sustainable effort at the grass roots level.
Acknowledgement: This article is based on a feature published in the Bengali daily newspaper ‘Prothom-Aloâ€TM (May 8, 2005)
Mon, Oct 3, 2005
Vision Journal