SAVE_SUCHANA: Ending the Cycle of Under-nutrition in Bangladesh_Annual Progress Report_April 2018 to March 2019

Abstract

WorldFish is mainly promoting nutrition sensitive fish and vegetable production systems to the beneficiary households of Suchana program. It comprises nutrition sensitive aquaculture and fisheries interventions along with the vegetable gardening to improve nutrition status of reproductive age women and children of less than 2 years old in Sylhet and Moulvibazar districts. In 2018, WorldFish has also piloted an integrated support model through incorporating the small-scale poultry along with the aquaculture and horticulture especially at the beneficiary households at phase 2 working unions. 
In collaboration with other Suchana consortium partners, WorldFish has supported more than 80,000 BHHs on nutrition sensitive horticulture including improved varieties of vegetable seeds, training, coaching, technical follow-ups and linkages with local value chain actors within April 2018 to March 2019. As one of the core interventions horticulture is common for the entire Suchana beneficiary households either from WorldFish (50%) or from HKI (50%). Within the reporting period, WorldFish have also supported 17,843 HFP-BHH, 304 Demo-pond HHs, and 2,332 IGA-BHHs on pond aquaculture, other fisheries options like fishing from open water, poultry rearing as an alternative (those didn’t have access to pond) and integrated supports especially those have access to smaller ponds less than 2 decimals of water area per BHHs. Accordingly the overall progress was around 90% compare to the AIP targets. 
Based on recent studies conducted by WorldFish, strong evidence was found on adoption of improved technologies and practices with considerable progress in the production and use of fish and vegetables at entire three categories of beneficiary households like HFP-Pond BHHs, Demo-pond BHHs and IGA-pond BHHs. There were strong reflections on increased dietary diversity of the reproductive age women and young children (6-23 months old) as well. According to the rapid assessment on integrated support model for phase-2 BHHs conducted in March 2019, there was also encouraging production and uses of fish, vegetables, poultry and eggs as well. 
Besides the considerable progress, there were also some challenges such as unexpected flood at some of the working areas was one of the major reasons of delaying the delivery aquaculture and poultry inputs. Delayed fingerlings stocking in ponds for flood free areas due to delayed procurement process as well as some vendors failed to supply fingerlings on time. So, procurement process of inputs should be started ahead for ensuring on-time delivery in coming seasons. Adequate technical follow-ups should be promoted to improve the quality of the overall interventions including pond aquaculture and vegetable gardening. Considering the promising responses from the integrated support model of poultry rearing along with the aquaculture and horticulture activities especially those have smaller ponds such as less than 2 decimals of water area per BHH, integrated support (Fish and poultry) can also be promoted especially for the multi-ownership pond households under phase 3. Pond water areas can be considered up to 3 decimal per household for integrated support model of phase 3. HFP-fisheries management (subsistence fishing and fish drying) interventions can be more effective especially for HFP-BHHs those don’t have access to ponds but have access to open water like river, haor, baor, beel or other flood plains