Mokaddes Ahmed Dipu

Mokaddes Ahmed Dipu was born and brought up in Bangladesh. Despite being raised in a non-farming family,  he has grown a strong passion for agriculture and agribusiness. He envisions an academic and research career in agribusiness with a keen purpose of improving the food value chain by alleviating smallholders’ and other disadvantaged community growers’ plight. Following his passion, he worked as academic staff for the Department of Agricultural Economics and Social Sciences at Chattogram Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (CVASU), Bangladesh; before that, he worked for Unilever Bangladesh Ltd.

He completed Master of Agribusiness from the University of Queensland (UQ), Australia, under the Prime Minister Fellowship awarded by the Prime Minister Office, Government of Bangladesh. Previously, he earned his Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degrees in Marketing from the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh.

During his master’s project at UQ, Dipu conducted a qualitative study on regenerative farmers in Southeast Queensland to identify the barrier and drivers of the uptake of regenerative agriculture in the area. That project inspired him to support agroecological growers through research and development for future eco benefits. Before that, Dipu carried out mixed-method research on smallholder dairy farmers in Bangladesh to connect them to the mainstream market to improve their economic sustainability. These recent research experiences have motivated him to look at different food grower communities especially disadvantaged ones from an agribusiness perspective under the sustainability umbrella.

In his PhD project, Dipu intends to model an indigenous-led cooperative to improve the native food value chain to benefit the indigenous community by overcoming the market access barrier.