BRAC designed an innovative project titled ‘Tenant Farmers Development Project (Borga Chashi Unnayan Prakalpa (BCUP)) to provide credit and extension services to small scale tenant farmers. The BCUP provides a customized credit service to farmers who cultivate land owned by others either fully or partially. The farmers are provided loans at a subsidized rate of interest of 10 per cent per year on a flat rate. Although the provision of extension service is not stipulated in the terms and conditions of the project contract, BRAC decided to include extension services on the premise that improved farming practices could increase the profitability of farming and thereby improve the capacity of the borrowers to repay the loan. The study is based on a mixed-method approach where both quantitative and qualitative methods are employed. To integrate the qualitative data within quantitative facts, ‘merging data’ method was followed. A randomized control evaluation design was adopted to evaluate the BCUP. The purpose of this report is to describe what the baseline results reveal about tenant farmers in Bangladesh. The results of this study indicate similarities among most of the outcome indicators between treatment and control groups and confirms the findings on the trend of transformation in a tenurial arrangement that is practised through diverse and co-existing forms. The study further reveals the extension needs of the tenant farmers and reflects the depravity of the tenant farmers in Bangladesh.
Authors: Hossain, Mahabub; Jaim, W M H; Malek, M A; Hossain, Marup; Jimi, Nusrat Abedin; Mahmud, Kazi Tanvir; Ahsan, Abu; Chakraborty, Barnali; Ahmed, Md Shakil; Reza, Md Hasib; Tarannum, Taheya; Rahman, A N M Mahfuzur; Das, Narayan C
Type: Report
Year: 2014