Allow me to talk about two federations of farmers. One lies in Tushvandar union of Lalmonirhat district called Tushvandar Federation of Farmers (TFF) and the other, in Mohendranagar union under the same district and is named as Mohendranagar Federation of Farmers (MFF). Both the locations are 1 to 2 hours drive from Rangpur. Farmers' cooperatives or federations are not new phenomena in this part of the world and hence should not inject any interest, whatsoever. But the reason I desired to drive there is the composition of the clients in the committee that the federations are comprised of. The members are drawn exclusively from households owning up to 100 decimals of land, called functionally landless and marginal households. It means, by and large, the federations that I am referring to are of the poor, by the poor and for the poor. In other words, these are not associations of the "haves" but of the "have-nots". Quite contrast to some of the federations and cooperatives that we come across, the federations seemingly hove higher levels of homogeneity. I was told that roughly one-third of the members are drawn from functionally landless groups (owning up to 50 decimals), one-third from marginal farm groups (owning 50 to 100 decimals) and 40 per cent member households have only homesteads. The federations average 350 members with women having due representations.

To become a member of the federation, the farmer groups have to be associated with at least five years with Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Services (RDRS). They should display some degree of social awareness, ability to absorb training inputs and eke out a substantial part of the livelihood from farming activities. And admittedly, RDRS acts from behind the scene as a "friend, philosopher and guide" for the federations. An elected committee through direct franchise is running the federations. Women have reserved seats to be contested by women only but voted by both men and women. They can also, if they wish, contest in the open seats against their counter parts and some of them already established their supremacy on that count.

Both the federations came into being in 1992 and at the moment own, on average, 50 decimals of land. Meantime, semi pucca office-cum training sheds, pucca seed godowns, drying facilities, rice mill and dryers have been made available in the premises of the federations. However, much of the infrastructural facilities have been financed by RDRS, possibly, to be recouped in course of time.

The federations have been fighting for the economic uplift of their members fraught with financial crisis. By the time I reached there to talk about their hopes and aspirations, the members had learnt that credit is not the panacea to move out of pervasive poverty. "Credit does help at the initial stage to buy few bullocks, poultry birds etc. but to keep going for ever, you need something else" some male and female members put before me with certain levels of confidence. "What is that "something else"? I pretended to be ignorant of the subject and asked. One female member explained: "we never used the credit for agricultural production because we thought, given limited land and knowledge that we had before, agriculture would not be profitable for us. Vagaries of nature was another constraint. So, we banked on non-agricultural pursuits by utilizing credit from RDRS. But, now we know that even 50 decimals of land can work like 100 decimals or so if we could apply knowledge about production practices.

Second, we could realize that we can produce our own food at no higher costs in our own land and buy non-food items through income generation in non-farm sector. So, we told our husbands that we should directly help them in cultivation of crops so that they have two hands to reap home harvests. Of course, still we need credit but, perhaps, not so much as we need knowledge".

"But you have not attended schools, colleges or universities. How can you gain knowledge and apply them for your uplift?" I asked. " Yes, it is true that we are not moha shikhak (meaning university professor) like you, but poor like us do not need to be moha biggani (big scientists) to survive. They need to know what to grow, how to grow and when to grow in fields. That's enough to put us on an even keel. Farms are our best friends and, perhaps, for ever. We never knew what farms could do for us. Now, these three things i.e. what, how and when do not need schools, colleges and universities to teach us. You see, recently, PETRRA-RDRS of IRRI/DFID sponsored gave us some training on how to keep seeds and put seedlings. We have been keeping seeds but not the way they told us. We found that seed health is as good as human health. You see, we had no idea about seedlings maintaining distances or using one or two instead of five or more to get more output. We sowed, as we liked. But now, we feel the difference. There are many varieties of paddy we never heard of although they are high yielding and produced by our institutions like BRRI. Thus whether, water or pests management or crop diversification, we learnt from the schools at our homesteads and fields rather than from moha shikhaks " the participants pinched me. I was informed that these poor farmers get together in the field to exchange views about problems and prospects. They call it "field schools".

"What the federations are doing for you?" They talked of some services that are provided by the federations. For example, long before the Food for Education (FFE) scheme got under way, the federations pursued a moral suasion programme to bring back children to schools. In fact, MFF made frantic efforts and succeeded to a large extent. It was in fact a chiming challenge in an area where children are considered as "assets" for households in generating income in a regime of pervasive poverty. Second, the federations are reported to fight against assault on women and children and against dowry. They hold processions, raise concerted voice and approach administration against any menace, whatsoever. The family feuds of the poor families are settled through the federations. Likewise, the federations are also carrying out health, nutrition and sanitation programmes. The MFF has plans to perform during its tenure hung on the wall: creating voters' consciousness, giving khas lands to members, fish culture, etc.

More importantly, some members of the federations have become sellers of seeds. The federations buy seeds from farmers when they need cash and store them for future. That reduced their dependency on BADC. Yield of paddy almost doubled due to new knowledge and ideas imparted through informal channels. "We are now more educated and united than before" they claimed.

An important aspect here is the involvement of 13 students from the Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU) who completed 13 Masters dissertation working with the farmers' of the federations. In fact, a trio of training took place here: poor farmers, trainers and students.

Srimoti Bulbuli Rani (45) of MFF claimed to me to have lifted her household above poverty line. She is a member of the executive committee of MFF. Just a decade back, she lived in a thatched house, owned only homestead land and could hardly manage three meals a day for the family. Very enterprising as she is, her training on tailoring paid her good dividends. She now trains females and draws Tk.6000 a month. On the agricultural front, she rented in some land to grow crops. " I did not know that I can broadcast seeds in muddy fields. I always knew that I need to transplant them. Now, new knowledge gained through training brought for me good results. I am trying to grow hybrid on 25 decimals and growing BRRIdhan 28, 39 " Bulbuli Rani expressed. I went to Bulbuli Rani's house nearby. Unfortunately she was not at home but her husband waited to welcome me. I found two tin sheds and one shallow tube-well that the household owns. The children are going to schools and colleges. Meantime, she brought back few parcels of land adjacent to the household, which were mortgaged earlier. "Rani does the most of the works. I only support her" said Rani's husband who has been living in Rani's village as ghor jamai.

Jamila Begum (40) of MFF requires 2.5 kg of rice everyday to feed a family of five. She owns 75 decimals and rents in another 54 decimals on a 50:50 share cropping arrangement in aman season. But in boro season, provided the owner bears no costs, the share is 2:1. Jamila told me: " buddhir obave Ami gorib chilam" (I was poor due to the lack of intelligence). Noticeably, she did not mention about the lack of land! Imbibed by training, she has been cultivating mustard, potato, vegetables on her owned land. This time, tempted by the training on agriculture especially paddy cultivation, she decided to go for paddy production in rented in land. In 54 decimals she got 30 maunds compared to 20 maunds historically observed with old technology and techniques of production. Good seed, line sowing and economizing on seedlings, irrigation and fertilizer application resulted in increased output.

Ismail Hossain (40) of TFF read up to class V but has to shoulder a family of six. The new ideas from the training on agriculture brought him back to agriculture that he ignored once. He established a nursery that provides half of the household income. Vegetables production, reportedly, provides 20 per cent and increased food production (including sales of seeds) 20 per cent of the income. His household no longer faces food deficit.

Amjad Hossain came with his wife Latifa Begum. Three years back, they lived in thatched house. Now in tin shed. Both of them are involved in vegetable production, for home consumption in the past but for the markets at the moment. Two years back, they harvested home 50 maunds but now 80 maunds of paddy form the parcels of plots.

While I was meeting the moderate poor, a group of ultra or extreme poor women assembled in the training hall of TFF. I was told that they were called in for training on Food for works programmes. The training pertains to some basics on social awareness. With permission from the organizers, I went to meet them. There were 30 women most of whom had no homestead land. They live in others' homestead land. Many of them lost homestead lands on account of riverbank erosions. Half of them are either separated or divorced and most of them come from areas prone to river erosion. They cannot feed their families- at least two meals a day due to the lack of purchasing power.

The contrast appeared quite clear to me. The moderate poor that I met are taken care of by the NGOs and other government organizations. Through various training and credit progarmmes, most of the moderate poor enabled themselves to uplift. To meet the Millennium Development Goal, we need to take account of the ultra poor that stand with no chance of a graduation. I hope that innovative ideas, institutions and researches will address the problems of the ultra poor. As I could glean from their faces, they are no less smart than the group I met just few seconds before. What they need is some land and some knowledge. The vast tracts of khas lands could be allocated to them. In fact, the last Awami League government made modest attempts at that by giving this group land and a house. Give them some land and provide land-based training. That would, possibly, work to see them above the poverty line.

Abdul Bayes is a Professor of economics at Jahangirnagar University.