Phased out Projects

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Phased out Projects and Mandates

Below are presented previous projects and mandates that have played an important role in the evolvement of Intercooperation's programme in Bangladesh and serve as basis for some of the current projects.

VFFP: Village & Farm Forestry Project (Phases I-VI: 1987 - 2003)
VFFP started in 1987 as part of the first Sustainable Land Use (SLU) Programme of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). It was conceived to implement action research in order to examine in more depth the traditional practice of cultivating trees on cropland. Witnessing the difficulty that its partner farmers were experiencing in purchasing tree saplings, it started in 1991 to promote, through local NGOs, the establishment of private nurseries at the village level on a commercial basis. By 2003, VFFP supported a self-reliant professional network of over 2'000 nurseries organised into 87 Upazilla-based associations (NMS: Nursery Malik Samities or nursery owners' associations), annually selling more than 19 million tree saplings at commercial rates. In 2001, VFFP started working directly with tree farmers. Over 4'000 existing groups were surveyed and a total of 500 groups identified for their interest and capability of working with the project for the promotion of agroforestry in their villages.
Reviewing missions in 2002 and 2003 provided two recommendations: firstly to widen the scope by taking on board a more comprehensive approach to poverty - encompassing livelihoods, marketing, institutional development, rights and social issues; secondly to eliminate inefficiencies that resulted from the overlapping with the SHABGE project, the other major field project of SDC's SLU programme, implemented by CARE and having a similar approach with the cultivation of vegetables. In 2004, VFFP and SHABGE merged into the current LEAF project as part of the second SLU programme.

FTIP: Fruit Tree Improvement Project (1999 - 2003)

Despite remarkable achievements in promoting the establishment of commercial nurseries in rural areas, the quality of planting materials - of such critical importance to the small farmer - remained poor. The concerns about the urgent need to improve quality aspects of the programme surfaced within VFFP and consequently, FTIP was initiated in 1999 to supplement VFFP activities, aiming at improvements in seed quality, nursery management and tree management. A mandate was given to the Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU) for producing and supplying quality planting material (QPM) of fruit trees to the nursery owners. A mother tree orchard - normally comprising 100 fruit trees of different varieties - was established under the management of a nursery owner in each of the 87 sub-districts covered by the project utilising the best planting material sourced from BAU.

This model was enthusiastically received by the nursery owners, with many of them replicating the mother trees (MT), without assistance - although not always using the original MTO model. The Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) subsequently adopted the approach. However, this development was limited to the programme area and was not sustainable since it did not fully involve all revelant national organisations responsible for such activities. Realising that the problem of QPM was a national issue requiring a national solution, FTIP and AFIP-1 (see below) subsequently merged 2004 into the current Agroforestry Improvement Partnership (AFIP) project.

AFIP-1: Agroforestry Improvement Project (2001 - 2003)

AFIP-1 was launched in 2001 on basis of the same shortcomings of VFFP that resulted in the initiation of FTIP, this time however aiming at the improvement of the timber, fodder and fuel-wood trees. A project implementation cell was established within VFFP that mobilised technical support and improved seeds from the mandated research institution - the Bangladesh Forest Research Institute (BFRI) - for the establishment of local sources of improved tree seeds involving the nursery owners' associations. AFIP-1 achieved considerable success in establishing sustainable local-level systems of multiplication and distribution of quality planting material (QPM) for the respective species. As with FTIP, it was quickly realised that the problem of QPM required a national solution which eventually led to the current Agroforestry Improvement Partnership (AFIP) project.

Mandate for the management of the Sustainable Land Use (SLU) Programme of SDC (2002 - 2005)
		Under the overall goal of substantially contributing to poverty reduction through a strategy of strengthening sustainable land use practices, the SLU mandate comprised overall management and development activities to 'operationalise' SDC's SLU strategy. Implemented from 2002 - 2005, it successfully converged the existing 'Natural Resource Management' activities into a single programme while at the same time shifting them from a more technical focus to a community centred development, enhancing rural people's capacity to effectively participate in market related development dynamics. SLU's ongoing projects (LEAF, SAAKTI, AFIP) are now capitalising on the experience and expertise generated by the SLU mandate.