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Harvesting of Agam Aman paddy has begun in five northern
districts of Lalmonirhat, Kurigram, Gaibandha, Nilphamari, and Rangpur, welcome news amid rising rice prices and the growing threat of a global food
crisis.
Abu Bakkar
Siddique, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in
Nilphamari, inaugurated Bangladesh's second largest paddy harvest in the
district on September 13 amid enthusiasm.
Aman is considered a magical crop as it has helped to
alleviate the local food crisis known as 'manga' in the northern part of the
country.
The term Monga had been in use for a long in the region to
mean a near famine from the middle of July to the middle of October. This was
because, after the completion of transplanting Aman seedlings, farm workers used
to become unemployed.
As a result, they could not buy foodstuff for their families
and hence passed days unfed or half-fed.
The economic scenario in the industrially underdeveloped
northern region changed dramatically more than a decade ago after the
Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) started introducing the early
varieties of the crop.
The varieties include BRRI paddy-33, BRRI-38, BRRI paddy-57,
BINA paddy-7, China paddy, and some other high-yielding crops. They have gained
popularity as they take only 90 to 100 days to mature compared to 140 to 150
days needed by traditional varieties to ripen, according to Obaidur Rahman,
deputy director of the DAE in Rangpur.
The early varieties provide farmers additional two months, allowing them to cultivate potatoes twice before the beginning of the Boro season, which starts in April.
This year, Aman has been cultivated on 6.20 lakh hectares of
land to produce 18.1 lakh tonnes of rice. Early varieties were sown on 1 lakh
hectares of land, up 6 percent from a year ago, said the regional office of
the DAE in Rangpur.
Thanks to the harvesting, a festive mood is prevailing in
the villages such as Muchirhat of Badarganj Upazila and Kursha of Taraganj
Upazila in Rangpur, Uttar Durahuti and Ramganj of Kishorganj, and Sadar
Upazila in Nilphamari.
Saiful Islam, a farmer in Muchirhat village, cultivated
BRRI-38 on five bighas of land and received 80 maunds of paddy. One maund
equals 40 kilograms.
He sold all of the paddies from the field and earned Tk
88,000 whereas he had to spend Tk 40,000 to cultivate them.
Islam said the production cost was higher than the previous
year owing to an increase in the prices of diesel and fertilizer.
In Bangladesh, the government has had to adjust upwards the
prices of diesel and fertilizer as their costs have rocketed internationally
owing to the supply disruptions driven by the Russia-Ukraine war. See details.
|Source: Online/SZK
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