Prospects and Sustainability of ‘Beekeeping–Key Crops Joint Enterprise’ Concerning Food and Nutrition Security for Bangladesh

Bangladesh has been suffering from nutrition aspects, food-importing, biodiversity weakening, and cultivable land deduction. Bangladesh has been accepted the challenge of ‘production intensification’ for its gradual increasing people. More employment opportunity can be produced through ‘beekeeping-key crop joint enterprise’, Bangladesh can export more beekeeping products and agricultural biodiversity can be enhanced along with fulfilling nutritious aspect including food security. The research work by utilizing control and treatment plots counting 4 sample districts with 20 beekeepers and 32 Mustard farmers considering Apis mellifera. 125 GBP establishment cost and 315 GBP returns have been outcome through the investigation and 2.52 B/C, 152 IRR, £1413.70 NPV were found from the experiment. Mustard yields were increased by 11%, 13%, 15%, and 9% from the treatment plots established in Sirajgonj, Pabna, Faridpur, and Kushtia districts respectively (comparing equal 400 ha ‘control Mustard plot’ for each district). The extra incomes (considering honey production from Mustard crop) were 840020 GBP, 153280 GBP, 21840 GBP, and 2340 GBP in Sirajgonj, Pabna, Faridpur, and Kushtia districts, respectively. In the case of the whole of Bangladesh data, the best box establishing year was 2016-17 (134795; total beebox established), and the best honey production year was 2015-16 (1256149 kg) compare to other years. Whereas, the lowest bee box establishment year and honey production year is 2019-20 with 96,980 bee box number and 560869 kg honey (less than half compared to 2015-16). Black cumin and Mustard fields are utilizing better than other crops.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Not applicable

The datasets used in this study are openly available at [repository link] and the source code is available on GitHub at [GitHub link].

This work did not receive any external funding.