Recently we have conducted a study in the north-eastern part of Bangladesh known as haor region where people live more than 6 months with flood in a year. The study participants indicated that the main occupation of the people in haor is rice cultivation and they have been doing it from generation to generation. They need to depend on their rice production to maintain their livelihood. However, they can hardly do it throughout the year because of long term flood. During the period of flood, they stop agricultural work and migrate to other places to find out alternatives otherwise stay jobless. Sometimes, the flood ravage their paddy fields before harvesting. The whole thing affect their living standard, food consumption, and nutritional status. Now, if we talk about sustainable farming systems for nutrition for such areas like haor we really need to understand how much it is possible to increase the resilience of farming systems in those areas given the seasonal vulnerability and remoteness of the areas. It will not be surprising if people grown up in such a vulnerable condition, consider nutritional diversity as a luxury because of their limited scope of growing diversified crops, and everyday struggle to secure shelter, earning and other basic needs.
Barnali Chakraborty