For a long time, slash and burn agriculture was a way of life for Funghkal Bawn.
Like other farmers from the ethnic Bawn community, in the Chittagong Hill Tract area of Bangladesh, he used to clear a new strip of land every season on the slopes near his village of Farukpara. On it he grew a single crop such as paddy rice, pineapple, ginger or turmeric.
But two years ago, a flash flood triggered by torrential rains damaged his entire crop of rice, leaving him short of food and money to buy new seeds.
The setback forced Bawn to rethink his traditional method of farming and find a more sustainable way to grow crops, to hedge against the growing likelihood of extreme weather.
Now Bawn sows a mixture of traditional crops and other plants on the hill slopes, to minimize his losses if any natural disaster hits his crop land again.
Other farmers are following his lead to help improve their resilience against the worsening impacts of climate change.
“I started mixed cultivation of crops, including pineapple, ginger, mango and coffee together,” Bawn told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
He sows and harvests the crops at different times. If one is damaged by floods or erratic rainfall, there is a chance that another will survive, and he will be able to sell that one instead, he explained.
Ten of the 22 families in Farukpara’s Bawn community are now practicing similar mixed cultivation.
Zarmoy Bawn, one of Fungkhal’s neighbors, said that along with traditional crops he has planted coffee saplings on his land. He hopes that once the trees start fruiting, he will be able to earn more money selling the cash crop.
