By Dr Aynal Haque
RAJSHAHI, Nov 11, 2020 (BSS) – Around 37.58 lakh tonnes of potato are expected to be produced from around 1.60 lakh hectares of land in all eight districts under Rajshahi division during the current Rabi season, said the latest official data.
Target has been set to produce 13.61 lakh tonnes of potato from 57,677 hectares of land in four districts under Rajshahi Agricultural Zone, while 23.98 lakh tonnes from 1.02 lakh hectares in four other districts of Bogura zone.
Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) has set the target and adopted all sorts of measures to attain the cherished target everywhere in the region, said Sudhendra Nath Roy, Additional Director of DAE here today.
Meanwhile, the farmers are passing busy time for catching the upcoming farming season as they got lucrative market price of the cash crop this season.
Altab Hossain, 54, a farmer of Mougachhi village under Mohanpur Upazila, is taking preparation to cultivate potatoes on around 170 bigha of land in Krishnapur area of Tanore Upazila. He has already booked his expected land.
“I had cultivated the cash crop on 110 bigha of land in the same area in the previous season. I had harvested around 8,800 mounds of potato and my profit was around Taka one crore after selling those,” said Hossain. He’s also very much hopeful about this year’s farming.
Like the previous year, Ershad Mondal, another farmer of the same upazila, had taken preparation to bring around 100 bigha of land under potato farming. He said the potato is being sold at around Taka 1,400 to 1,600 per mound, which is much higher than the previous years.
Many other farmers like Altab and Ershad are taking full-preparations to make their potato farming commercially a total success. They have already completed the lease process of the lands much before harvesting the transplanted aman paddy.
Land preparation and seed sowing activities are likely to start in full-swing everywhere in the region just harvesting the aman paddy.
Mijanur Rahman, an operator of deep-tube-well in Krishnapur village, said the farmers are seen cultivating potatoes more instead of Boro paddy in the Barind area and the Tanore and Godagari Upazilas in particular.
He identically mentioned that the farmers are interested in potato farming as it’s being adjudged as a less-irrigation consuming crop than the boro paddy, which is a good sign in terms of lessening the gradually mounting pressure on underground water in the dried barind area.
Under the ‘Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM)’ project, more than 12.58 lakh community people of 2.66 lakh households are also being motivated and encouraged towards potato farming to reduce the pressure on underground water.
The project is being implemented by DASCOH Foundation at around 1,280 drought-hit villages in 39 Union Parishads and three municipalities of eight upazilas in Rajshahi, Naogaon and Chapainawabganj districts since 2015, said Jahangir Alam Khan, Coordinator of the project.
Simultaneously, commercial potato farming has been expanded to the dried lands in massive way during the last couple of years in the vast Barind tract as a result of promoting irrigation facilities by the Barind Multipurpose Development Authorities (BMDA).
Agriculturist Sudhendra Nath Roy said the field level officials, experts and other organisations concerned have been providing necessary instructions to the farmers to make their upcoming farming a total success.
Most of the growers’ harvested better yields of potatoes in the last two to three years.
Last season, the farmers harvested more than 36.85 lakh tonnes of potato from around 1.64 lakh hectares of land in the division, Sudhen Roy added.