Over 30,000 poor families of 250 villages in five districts of Rangpur division have achieved self-reliance through vegetables cultivation.
Most of them were in abject poverty in the remote and sandy chars in Rangpur, Kurigram, Lalmonirhat, Gaibandha, Nilphamari, Dinajpur, Thakurgaon and Panchagarh districts before taking up vegetables farming as the means of their subsistence.
Now they are leading a better life with three-time meals in a day, sanitary facilities and their children going to schools and NGO-run informal educational institutions and dreaming for a better life in the desired developed Bangladesh.
Public representatives and officials in the district and upazila administrations said those, who were extremely poor five years ago, are now leading, somewhat, a solvent life only because of the vegetables farming both in their crop lands and homesteads.
DAE officials said vegetables are being cultivated on more than 156,000 hectares of land including the vast tracts of sandy-barren char areas now with the total acreage increasing every year.
Besides, homestead vegetables gardening in recent years in the vast char areas by the women with the assistances of the Chars Livelihoods Programme has also brought a revolutionary change in the economy of char life and women empowerment there.
With the help of NGOs and other organisations, huge quantities of vegetables are being produced in 45 char-village of the Teesta basin under Gangachara, Pirgachha and Kawnia upazilas in Rangpur, changing the lives of over 18,000 families so far.
“Farmers are selling around 20,000 tonnes of vegetables every year alone in Aditmari upazila of Lalmonirhat district and our total income will be higher if we get proper marketing and preservation facilities,” said farmer Parvez Alam.
“I earn Tk350,000 every year by cultivating snake gourd on my land and farming of this variety of vegetable has brought happiness in my family, he said.
Abdul Kuddus of Komlabari village is now well known as `Chichinga (snake gourd) Kuddus’ and Abdul Matin as `Korola (bitter gourd) Matin’ as both the farmers brought about a revolutionary change in their lives by producing these two varieties of vegetables at initial stages.
The villagers grow vegetables like bitter gourd, snake gourd, string beans, pointed gourd, stuffed teasel gourd, gourd, brinjal, cauliflower, chilly, onion and garlic.