The archive · Marketing & Growth · Strategic decision · 2024–2025
Shopnodhora lends idle land to landless farmers — Plot Farming wins MAD STARS Grand Prix
A Bangladeshi developer turns its vacant land into farmland shared 70/30 with landless farmers — 9,720 plots, MAD STARS 2025 Grand Prix.
Shopnodhora Asset Development · POP5
What it had to solve
Bangladesh is urbanizing fast: fertile farmland is bought by developers and left vacant for years, while more than six million landless farmers lose their livelihoods and drift into insecure city jobs — two disconnected realities on the same plots.
How it works
Bangladesh is one of the world's fastest-urbanizing countries. As developers bought up fertile farmland for real estate, much of it sat vacant for years waiting for construction; meanwhile more than six million landless farmers lost their livelihoods and moved to cities for unstable jobs. Real estate marketing usually ignored this — glossy brochures and launch events selling square metres.
POP5, an independent Bangladeshi agency, proposed a different relationship between developer and land. Inspired by the traditional 'borga chashi' sharecropping system, it turned Shopnodhora's idle residential plots into productive farmland: landless farmers signed formal contracts, farmed under supervision, and split the harvest 70/30 — 70% to the farmer, 30% to the landowner. The developer's vacant asset started producing food, jobs and income instead of sitting idle.
The results were measurable and large for a single campaign: 9,720 idle plots converted to farmland, 5,163 farmers employed, over a million kilograms of produce harvested, average farmer income up 200% and brand favorability up 210%. Internationally, the idea earned the MAD STARS 2025 Grand Prix in Sustainable Cities plus Gold in No Poverty, a D&AD Graphite Pencil, a Bronze at Spikes Asia and recognition at PHNX, The One Show and The ANDYs — eight recognitions in all.
Why it lands
- The campaign solved two problems at once — idle urban land and landless farmers — instead of inventing a cause for the brand.
- Reviving a trusted traditional practice (sharecropping) made a corporate initiative feel like community knowledge, not charity.
- A clean, fair split (70/30) gave farmers a real stake, which made the model spreadable to other developers.
- Using the company's own business asset as the medium made the idea impossible to copy cheaply.
What it did
9,720 idle plots became farmland, 5,163 farmers gained work, over a million kilograms of produce was harvested, farmers' average income rose 200% and brand favorability 210% — the campaign won the MAD STARS 2025 Grand Prix (Sustainable Cities), Gold (No Poverty), a D&AD Graphite Pencil and a Bronze at Spikes Asia.
What you can take
The most honest brand idea reuses the business itself: lending vacant land to landless farmers turned an idle asset into a social model — a company's own operations can be the campaign.
Since then
Plot Farming stopped being a single campaign: after the first successful harvest, Shopnodhora wrote to developers across Bangladesh recommending the model, and several joined. POP5, founded in 2024, collected eight international recognitions for the project, then repeated the pattern with DBL Ceramics' TileChalk — turning ceramic sludge into classroom chalk — which added nine more, helping Bangladesh's creative industry appear on global festival stages it had rarely reached.
Sources
- POP5 Wins Grand Prix at Mad Stars 2025 for 'Plot Farming'
- [수상자 인터뷰] 버려진 땅을 삶의 터전으로 바꾸다 — Plot Farming
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