RAJSHAHI, Jan 8, 2021 (BSS) – Around 78,000 tonnes of lentils are expected to be produced from 55,236 hectares of land in this division during the current Rabi season, officials said.
Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) has set the target of producing 48,375 tonnes of lentil from 34,400 hectares of land in four districts of its Rajshahi Agricultural Zone, while 29,378 tonnes from 20,836 hectares of land in four other districts of Bogura zone.
DAE’s Additional Director Sirajul Islam said all possible measures were adopted to attain the production target of lentil as its newly developed high yielding varieties are being provided to the farmers.
Some 21,200 farmers were given seed and fertilizer support for lentil farmers to recoup their losses caused by the devastating flood in the division. Besides, all the government and non-government entities concerned are motivating the farmers for farming various water-saving crops including lentil in the Barind area to lessen the gradually mounting pressure on underground water, he said.
He, however, said pulse farming is increasing gradually in the region including its vast Barind tract as its cultivation and irrigation cost is less compared to many other crops especially paddy. “We are cultivating lentil to avoid hassle in getting irrigation water for paddy,” said Mojahar Hossain Islam, a farmer of Bidirpur village under Godagari Upazila. He mentioned that the acreage of lentil is increasing day by day.
Hossain said he has cultivated lentils on three-bigha of land this year without spending extra money for irrigation.
A farmer can get four to five maunds of lentil from per bigha of land. One maund of lentil is now being sold at Tk 4,000 to 4,300 in local markets, he said.
He further said the growers here are showing more interest in lentil cultivation as it does not take much irrigation cost. Besides, they got abundant production in the last few years.
Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute’s senior scientific officer Dr Shakhawat Hossain said huge lentil output is possible in the Barind region if it is cultivated on around 80,000 hectares of land, which usually remains fallow for more than three months after the harvest of transplanted Aman paddy every year.
More than 1,500 volunteers are encouraging and inspiring farmers to cultivate the less water consuming crops through water resource management on behalf of the ‘Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM)’ Project.
DASCOH Foundation has been implementing the IWRM project in 1,280 drought-hit villages of 39 Union Parishad and three municipalities in eight upazilas of Rajshahi, Naogaon and Chapainawabganj districts with financial support of Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation since 2015.
Farmers have started showing interest in lentil cultivation as they reaped a lucrative market price of the crop in the last couple of years, said IWRM Project Coordinator Jahangir Alam Khan.
Prof Chowdhury Sarwar Jahan of the Department of Geology and Mining in Rajshahi University said the farmers in high Barind areas have to spend much for irrigation in paddy farming, but lentil cultivation needs less irrigation. So farmers are interested in cultivating lentil.