My husband Manik and I are extremely poor, we live in a temporary shelter on an embankment beside a small branch of the Padma River in Bangladesh. We have no land, only the home stead where we live. In 2013 I was selected as an orange-fleshed sweetpotato root producer for the USAID Horticulture Project.
During that time, we rented an 0.03-hectare plot of land for sweetpotato cultivation. I received minimum input cost from the project, as well as training on how to cultivate the sweetpotato.
Following our first harvest, we paid the rent to the land owner and consumed some of the sweetpotato over 3 months. The rest we distributed to our family, used some as feed for cattle and sold the rest. We made US$123, after expenses.
With the income, we invested in a cow to make more money. The year after was even better and we bought a goat with our profit.
We’ll continue the orange-fleshed sweetpotato root production for our own foor and for feed for the livestock as well.