Small Scale Integrated Agriculture: a Tool of Poverty Alleviation, Gender Equality Promotion and Improving Food Security at Household Level in Coastal Region of Bangladesh

In developing countries, small scale integrated agriculture acts as a tool for supplying the fast-growing human population with high-quality protein, additional income to poor and food security to household, especially women. This study was conducted in different SLOPBBangladesh project areas of Patuakhali, a coastal district of Bangladesh to observe the effect of small scale integrated agriculture on poverty alleviation, equality of gender promotion and food security at household level. After baseline survey with a structured questionnaire, a total of 583 women beneficiaries were selected from poor communities and given training and technical support on family poultry, aquaculture and homestead gardening from 2008 to 2012. Data of income were collected in every month and analyzed by one way ANOVA or F-test, used to test significant difference among the mean income of different years and one sample t-test, used to test the significance difference in percent (%) of yearly increase income in different years and from baseline. It was postulated that, the number of income getting women grew in an upward trend along the advances of time, and average yearly income became significantly from baseline and rose to 246, and 566.42% for family poultry and homestead gardening respectively. For all three activities, it was significantly climbed to 281.79%, which brings better food and nutritional security in household, and the women were self-employed, empowered, and more esteemed to their family members as well as society than ever before.