Two indicators were used: the economic subsistence level (ESL) where annual income equaled expenditure and a nutritional poverty line (NPL) where average annual total income equaled the estimated taka cost of an acceptable nutritional diet per average household for each size grouping. Across three sampler reviewed in detail, 22% of the total sample of 135 farmers were below the ESL and 16 % below the NPL. A further 15% were around the ESL and 5% around the NPL. These figures appeared to be much lower estimates dun those found by others. The main difference was that the data for this study were collected from weekly monitoring over the whole duration of the season/year and hence should have been more accurate than the cross sectional data used in other studies.