How is Bangladesh preparing farmers for increasingly salty soil?
- Soils along Bangladesh coast becoming more salinated
- Many crops will not grow in dry season when soil saltier
- Country tries to educate farmers on how to cope
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Bashar now has access to salt-tolerant seeds and has raised her planting beds and dug drainage channels. The training has taught her to use rice-straw mulch to prevent evaporation that increases salinity.
Using a simple, inexpensive salinity meter provided by Cordaid, one of the partner NGOs, Bashar can now test her own soil and also has a low-tech rainwater irrigation system.
According to the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, the amount of land brought back into production in the region during the dry season when soil salinity is highest has increased 270% since 2016, though the institute said that result had not been independently verified.
For Bashar and tens of thousands like her, the programme in Bangladesh has been a success, but not an unqualified one. The threat of climate change and perennial lack of freshwater is threatening everything she has achieved.
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