The ActionAid Bangladesh on Friday gave certificates to 69 agricultural trainers after two months' training, launching a four-year FoSHol: Action Aid", a project to be implemented in six districts to ensure food security to 20,000 farming households.

"The trainers are key to the project's success", said Indu Bhushan, ActionAid farming systems coordinator and head of the training programme,

"They have been taught and have developed an all embracing approach to farming - and now they are the ones to go out and reach the farmers."

ActionAid distributed the certificates on farming on land leased from the government situated near the BADC training centre at Kakraid

under Modhupur upazila in Tangail district. Trainers from all over the country are taking part in the training.

In the two-month training, the trainers established alternative ways of farming. They used dikes between rice fields to cultivate vegetables. They combined rice plantation with fish breeding. And, they created what they considered to be an ideal farming settlement on eight decimal land, consisting of living space for a household of four, two vegetable gardens, an open and covered hen cage, a pond and a bee hive.

During the closing ceremony of the two-month training course, the trainers showed much vigour to get started on working with the farmers. They chanted slogans like Crop is mine, decision is mine!"

"Diverse agriculture is nothing

new", said ActionAid Country Director Nasreen Huq. "What's new about our approach, however, is that we'll be listening to farmers much more closely. The FoSHol project is a grassroots project."

Ideally, Huq remarked, the FoSHol trainers will be taking back just as many ideas from the farmers as they developed in the training. Huq stressed that farming is not simply about growing plants and looking after cattle, but about management, marketing and infrastructure. "We need to learn, what the farmers truly need."

The project also stresses issues of bio diversity. In the model agriculture land near the training centre, crops were grown without using pesticides.

'FoSHol: Action Aid' is financed by the European Commission (2.32

Million Euro) and the ActionAid (0.26 Million Euro). Nasreen Huq said: This is the first time we have so much of funds to our disposal for such a project." But not just the funding is large. The amount of partners involved is also overwhelming.

While the International Rice Resaerch Institute (IRRI) is responsible for project co-ordination, six smaller NGOs are delivering the projects in the six remote districts.

They are Jibika, Uttaran, Jagroto Jubo Sangstha (JJS), Sped Trust, Noakhali Rural Development Society (NRDS) , and the Voluntary Association for Rural development (VARD).

Globally active NGOs Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) and ITGD are also implementing the FoSHol Project.