Tenant farmers’ access to credit and extension services: BRAC tenant farmer development project in Bangladesh

Abstract

Using several large scale datasets/reports (such as, reports of Agricultural Censuses conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the longitudinal repeat household surveys of 62 villages maintained by the first author and the household census for about 60,000 households conducted for an impact assessment study financed by the 3ie of the Global Development Network), this paper provides extensive information on the changes in the tenancy market and shows the number of small and marginal farm household has been growing despite rapid rural urban migration and expansion of rural non-farm economy. The tenancy market has moderated the distribution of land holding in a regime of highly skewed land ownership. But the agrarian structure is getting increasingly dominated by marginal and small farms that are largely dependent on the tenancy market for land. These farmers, however, have limited access to credit and extension services. With this backdrop, the BRAC tenant farmer development program, known as Borga chashi Unnayan Prakalpa (BCUP), was thus designed to meet the demands of working capital for farming and the knowledge of improved technology and farming practices.