The Agri-Entrepreneur Next Door - A global farming initiative is redefining jobs and harvests in rural Bangladesh

It is early morning in a small market town in northern Bangladesh, and Mehedi is already at his shop. He opened the doors of his Better Life Center in Saidpur before dawn, stacking shelves with seeds and crop protection products, as he readies himself for the stream of farmers who will come in from surrounding villages before the day grows hot. His young daughter sometimes stops by after school, threading through the rows of inputs to find her father behind the counter, and lately, her grandfather too, who now helps manage a space the family has built on its own land.

Five years ago, Mehedi was a recent university graduate in a country where youth unemployment weighs heavily on young shoulders. He had a degree and ambition, but no clear path forward. That struggle was far from his alone — for many educated young graduates, ambition is plentiful, but jobs are not. Then a Better Life Farming agri-consultant came to his community, looking not for established shopkeepers, but for people like Mehedi: curious, trusted by neighbors, open to learning.

Today, Mehedi serves over 500 farmers across five villages. He does more than sell agricultural solutions—he diagnoses, advises, and follows up. He is, in the language of the program, an agri-entrepreneur. But to the farmers who rely on him, he is something simpler and more essential: the person you call when your crop starts wilting and you don't know why.

In stepping into that role, Mehedi also found something else: a steady livelihood, and proof that agriculture can be a genuine career path for young people willing to reimagine what a job can look like.

Finding the Mehedis

One of the distinctive features of Better Life Farming Bangladesh is the deliberate search for untapped human potential in rural communities, particularly among young people for whom agriculture, while long a mainstay of the economy, has not been seen as a viable future.

"Job scarcity is a real problem here. Educated young men, graduates, are sitting idle. Not because they lack ambition, but because opportunity is hard to find. So, we open a door. We bring them in for trial sessions on modern agri-techniques, no pressure, just a look at what's possible. Not everyone comes back, but many do. Enough to surprise you. And from those who stay, we find our next agri-entrepreneur," says Razzak, a Better Life Farming agri-consultant.

The training agri-entrepreneurs receive through Better Life Farming—drawing on methodologies from IFC's Agribusiness Leadership Program—covers not only agronomy but also business management, digital tools, advisory service models, and risk frameworks. The goal is not to create short-term intermediaries but a generation of professional rural service providers capable of growing with their communities.

Better Life Farming Bangladesh aims to empower over 1,000 agri-entrepreneurs, with at least 20% women—more than double the current share. In turn, these agri-entrepreneurs will directly serve over 250,000 farmers across the country, acting as the human infrastructure of a new agricultural ecosystem.

The Ground Shifts Beneath Their Feet. In a Good Way

In a village a few hours from Saidpur, Rahima tends to her fields. She is not a new farmer. Her family has worked this land for generations, reading its moods and yielding to its rhythms. But the way she farms now is different.

“My family has worked this land for years. We did what we knew. But the Better Life Farming agri-entrepreneurs showed us a better way to irrigate and the difference showed up in the harvest. I used to get 10 maund. Now I get 20. The land is now working for us."

A maund is a traditional unit of weight used across South Asia amounting to roughly 37 kilograms. For Rahima, that doubling of yield means the difference between stress and stability, between just enough and a little more to put aside.

Not far away, Torikul, a rice farmer, has a similar story to tell. He heard about the Better Life Farming agri-entrepreneur through other farmers and decided to see for himself. What he found was not a salesman, but an advisor.

"Farming is hard work, but I wasn't seeing it in my earnings. When the Better Life Farming agri-entrepreneur came, I won't say everything changed overnight, but I started learning things I didn't realize I needed to know. I changed how I worked the land, what I grew, how I sold it. I took what I learned from the Better Life Farming agri-entrepreneur and put it to work: different methods, better practices, more attention to quality. It wasn't easy, but the market noticed. My income nearly doubled from around 30–40 thousand taka (about $270-360) to 60–70 thousand taka (about $540-630).”

For Torikul, the income gain means more. It is school fees paid on time, better food on the table, and a sense that the future on his farmland is something he can shape rather than merely endure.

More Than a Shop

What makes the Better Life Farming model work? It is not just the quality of the inputs or the accuracy of the advice, though both matter enormously. It is the trust that accumulates, transaction by transaction, season by season. Farmers come back not because they have no choice, but because the solutions work and because the person across the counter genuinely understands their land.

The Better Life Farming centers have also taken on an unexpected role in many communities: they have become social spaces, particularly for women. In villages in Bangladesh where women have limited access to public gatherings and formal extension services, the centers offer something rare. They become a legitimate reason to gather, share experiences, learn alongside peers, or simply spend time together. Increasingly, women are working in these shops alongside their husbands, and in some cases, leading them. The centers serve as meeting points where modern farming knowledge and community solidarity grow together.

The Larger Picture

Better Life Farming Bangladesh reflects a broader shift in how we think about agriculture. This initiative is building systems of trust, knowledge, and commerce that can endure and grow beyond any single intervention or funding cycle.

The program's climate-smart agronomic guidance helps farmers manage water more efficiently, protect soil health, and adapt their practices to an increasingly unpredictable environment. Farmers using Better Life Farming advice are learning to save water, reduce input waste, and build the kind of long-term fertility that makes a plot viable for the next generation.

At the market level, the entrepreneurs are beginning to aggregate produce, helping smallholders consolidate small harvests into volumes that attract better buyers and prices. In doing so, they are helping smallholders connect to more reliable value chains, improving the consistency, quality, and market readiness of their production. The fragmented isolation that once defined rural agriculture as “every farmer alone against the market” is giving way to something more connected and more powerful.

The World Bank Group's AgriConnect initiative sees Bangladesh as a test case for what is possible when public and private resources are aligned around the needs of smallholder farmers. With 1.2 billion people employed globally in agrifood and two-thirds of the workforce in low-income countries tied to farming, the stakes could not be higher. Behind the target of 300 million farmers moving from subsistence to surplus are real people -- a Torikul whose income doubles, a Rahima whose harvests climb. And each one brings that ambition closer to reality.