Development of Rice-Fish Farming in Enhancing Economic and Seasonal Benefits: A Case Study from Bangladesh

Integrated rice-fish farming can enhance the efficiency of land use, diversify production with varied foods, and support smallholder income security. However, pathways to adoption, economic viability, and seasonal advantages related to integrated rice-fish farming need more documentation in northwest Bangladesh. To fill this knowledge gap, this exploratory study investigated the process of adoption, farm attributes, comparative productivity, and seasonal livelihood benefits of integrated rice-fish farming among selected farmers in the Dinajpur Sadar subdistrict. This study analyzed the data collected from 30 rice-fish farms that also had rice-only fields, making comparison possible between rice-fish and rice-only agriculture. Several participatory rural appraisal techniques, such as historical timeline analysis, transects, focus group discussion, and questionnaire survey, were used to collect the data. The majority of rice-fish farmers were young and educated farmers practicing in medium lowland irrigated rice farming systems. Commonly cultured fish species were carps and Tilapia, stocked at a density of 24,700 ± 3250 individual ha−1. While rice production did not vary significantly between rice-fish and rice-only field practices, additional fish production raised gross income, net income, and benefit-cost ratio. Gross income in rice-fish farming was Bangladesh Taka BDT 506,632 (≈USD 6247.00) and BDT 212,600 (≈USD 2621.45) in rice-only practice, whereas net income was BDT 373,243 (≈USD 4602.25) and BDT 126,667 (≈USD 1561.86), respectively.