Organic Sack Gardening - Bangladesh

This activity is encouraging urban Bangladeshis to grow vegetables in tall sacks, which presents many advantages. It can be done with little space, uses wastewater and the method is cheap and allows for year-round cultivation. The initiative improves nutrition and food security in a land fraught with poverty and problems related to climate change.

Fast facts:

At present, around 3,500 households are practicing this organic sack gardening from a household food security perspective;
A garden of eight to ten sacks can provide a household with a regular year-round supply of vegetables.

The problem

Bangladesh has one of the highest urban growth rates in the world, with hundreds of thousands of people leaving overpopulated and poor rural areas to settle in larger cities. The metropolitan city of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is one of the most densely populated cities in the world with an area of 131 square kilometers and supports approximately 20 million people. Dhaka has been challenged recently by numerous difficulties like unplanned urbanization, growing urban poverty, growth of urban slums, food insecurity, solid waste management and environmental degradation. As climate change becomes a major issue, low-lying Bangladesh experiences more intense storms and flooding. Rising sea levels are also decreasing the amount of farmland available. Combined with population growth, climatic changes cause an increasingly precarious situation for food security.

The solution

Organic sack gardening is a cost effective approach to combating food insecurity and can be developed on just a little patch of land. Tall sacks are filled with earth, planted with vegetable seeds and can be cultivated year round with recycled wastewater. With some care, leafy greens, herbs, onions, and other vegetables sprout from the top and sides of the sacks. Households can eat the vegetables, and even sell them at the local market for extra income. This innovative approach of gardening can help improve household level nutrition and food security in a country fraught with poverty, malnutrition and climate change related issues.

Helping the planet

Recycling urban organic trash and water comprises a form of permaculture that reduces waste and resource use within the city. Utilizing already available space and recycling resources means less pressure on dwindling farmlands outside the city. Also, organic gardening does not require fertilizers or pesticides, which leads to less water and land pollution.

Helping people

Urban households and producers are provided with all the skills required to establish successful urban gardens. Participants gradually learn as to how to access materials to prepare the sacks and other related materials. The activity keeps in touch with the households and provides them with technical support if necessary. In addition, social, print and electronic media will be rolled out to help promote the movement and make it more sustainable.

Scaling Up

This activity has scaled out organically to neighbouring households who wanted to learn the method through informal knowledge exchange. Very often it encourages people to work together in small local urban neighbourhood networks and groups. In the upcoming years this activity plans to implement the “Dhaka Urban Food Security Project”. It plans to reach around 500 apartments, five slums and ten primary/secondary schools with organic sack gardening technology in the next two years.