8. Market Development in the Vegetables Sector with focus on Profitable Cropping Patterns in Greater Rangpur

Client

Swisscontact

Location

Greater Rangpur, Bangladesh

Duration

24 Months (July 2008 – July 2010)

Status

Completed

Background

The basic staples that feed the world wheat, rice and corn continue their inexorable rise in cost and scarcity. Farmers largely depend on their land for food security of him and his/her family. Cropping Pattern plays a substantial role in farmers’ cultivation. Greater Rangpur is a ground where cropping pattern appears in varieties. Usually farmers cultivate different types of crops including cereal crops, vegetables and spices in their land round the year.

GMark designed & implemented market development interventions to promote a suitable cropping pattern for the farmers in Greater Rangpur, so that the impacts can benefit the last mile and also to ensure that impacts are distributed across the value chain thus leading to equitable development and improved livelihood for the poor living below poverty line.

Intervention Areas

As the project followed Market Development Approach which emphasizes the systematic change and more effective service market that works for the poor, GMark partnered with several private sector service market actors by realizing them the importance of providing information to the farmers that eventually increases their market share. The incentives there were to capture the untapped market by taking some research and extension work related to capacity building of farmers in improved production technology.