Narrative Description of the Project:

This assignment was undertaken by the Smallholder Agricultural Competitiveness Project (SACP), Department of Agriculture Marketing (DAM), Ministry of Agriculture funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The assignment duration was of 05 (five) months (February to June 2020) and the training location was Chandanaish, Chattogram, Bangladesh. The main goal of this project was to contribute to Bangladesh’s agriculture smallholder responsiveness and competitiveness in high-value crop (HVC) production and marketing of fresh and/ or processed products. The project’s target was to increase farmer income and livelihood through demand-led productivity growth, diversification, and marketing in a changing climate condition. The main objective of the assignment was to enhance the capacity of farmers in postharvest and primary processing of high-value crops and increase farmer’s income and their livelihood. Under this assignment, a total of 2875 participants received training in 115 (one hundred fifteen) batches.

Key Activities:

• Inception meeting with DAM officials and submitted the inception report
• Conducted Training Needs Assessment (TNA) and desk review of the project documents
• Revised the training module (both Bangla and English) to conduct training.
• Implemented training schedule for 115 (one hundred & and fifteen) batches.
• Conducted the training with different stakeholders such as farmers, businessmen, consumers, DAM officials, etc. It works in a diverse range of agricultural product marketing such as vegetables, cereals, and fruits.
• Training pre & post assessment
• Advised the farmers and agricultural business personnel to improve the existing marketing system, identify the problems and offer solutions to develop the present agricultural product marketing systems in Bangladesh through training.
• Provided agricultural product marketing strategies (mainly HVCs) in the perspective of Bangladesh. FAO provided the list of HVCs and IPTM had included those HVCs in training sessions for smooth traceability of agricultural products.
• Conducted training according to contract, keeping records (hard copy and softcopy), prepared, and submitted inception, interim, and final reports.