Fariha Farjana

• Agriculture, land use, climate change

• Bangladesh

Title: Role of Mixed Farming to Improve Food Security and Forest Conservation:An Empirical Study on the Coastal Area of Bangladesh

Hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity remain major global threats. In 2021, more than 800 million people were undernourished. The IMF shortlisted 48 countries as hunger hotspots, with Bangladesh being one of them (Georgieva, Sosa and Rother, 2022). In Bangladesh, 11.7 million people suffer from severe and chronic food insecurity (IPC, 2022), 28% of the children are stunted, and 10% are wasted (ICDDRB, 2022). The government of Bangladesh is incentivizing the agricultural sector to push the production frontier upward, but current trends suggest that the country fails to achieve SDG 2. Why is food insecurity still common in Bangladesh? Multitudinous factors, such as climate change, COVID-19, deforestation, market instability and a general economic downturn escalate food insecurity. Besides, the Russia-Ukraine war is worsening the economy of Bangladesh, such that the number of food-insecure people took a sharp upward turn in 2022. The war and its international implications exacerbate pressures on market stability and contributes to inflation of fuel, fertilizers and food prices. In April 2023 the food price inflation in Bangladesh was at 8.8% (World Bank, 2023). In addition, Bangladesh is the 7^th extreme climate change and disaster risk prone country (CVI, 2023). In the past two decades, Bangladesh experienced 185 extreme weather events and economic losses of over $1 billion (Eckstein, Künzel, and Schäfer, 2021). It is projected that in 2023 El Niño will significantly impair rice yields in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Vietnam (World Bank, 2023). Amidst these challenges, Bangladesh is trying to increase its agricultural productivity but the production practices are not environmentally sustainable. Bangladesh has positioned 29^th among 160 countries for chemical pesticide use (Worldometers, 2023). This raises questions of future sustainability of biodiversity and agricultural productivity. Against this background, mixed farming could be a more environmentally friendly practice.Hence, the author intends to explore the following research questions:

i.What are the factors affecting farmers’ decision to adopt mixed farming?

ii. What is the impact of mixed farming on household food security?

iii. How does mixed farming affect household’s labor allocation to farm and off-farm activities?

iv. What is the impact of mixed farming on forest extraction activities?

v. Does mixed farming contribute to household resilience capacity?

Since November, 2013 I am serving as a faculty of Economics Discipline of Khulna University, Bangladesh. Conducting class lecture, question paper setting, answer script evaluation, undergraduate and master students' these supervision are the key responsiblilities I have performed at my work station. Now I am on study leave to pursue my doctoral studies. 

I passed my Master of Science in Globalization and Development from IOB at University of Antwerp in Belgium with great distinction in 2016-2017 session. It was funded by VLIR-UOS scholarship. I had accomplished my Master and Bachelor of Social Science in Economics from Economics Discipline of Khulna University with distinction in session 2011-2012 and 2007-2011, respectively.

Development Economics, Agricultural Economics, Health Economics

Techniques of Provisioning Service Accumulation from Mangrove for Livelihood of Endogenous Community: A Study from the Lens of Food Security, Intergenerational mobility, and Sustainability discourse

DAAD Doctoral Scholarship 

Prof. Dr. Matin Qaim

Dr. Thanh Tung Nguyen

Fariha_CV_04_07_2023_Final.pdf [PDF | 182.68KB]