The farmers in Jhenaidah district are not happy with the price they are getting for the aromatic rice Banglamoti.
This new variety of stress tolerant aromatic rice is currently selling for Tk700 to Tk730 per maund (40kg) while the similar breed of Indian rice is selling for Tk1,000 per maund in the same market.
The farmers said it had become really hard for them to cover the production cost at this price and make any kind of profit.
Ashok Ghosh from the Maharajpur village in the district said he had cultivated the BR 50 variety of paddy, commonly known as Banglamoti, in three bighas of land. He had had a pleasing harvest of about six maunds per bigha.
He alleged that Basmati, the Indian equivalent of Banglamoti, has been a popular brand of aromatic rice in Bangladesh and the local breed was struggling hard to compete with it.
Abdul Khaleq, a farmer who had come to sell his harvest at the Kaliganj rice market, said the Banglamoti could change the luck of many farmers if they got good prices.
Officials of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in Jhenaidah said the farmers have not been getting good prices mainly because the rice mill owners had not been showing too much interest with the local breed.
They are more interested in storing the Indian breed because it was high in demand, they said.
Experts feared that the existing price might end up discouraging the farmers from expanding the cultivation of the local aromatic rice in coming years.
Joynul Abedin, deputy director of DAE Jhenaidah, said the department had encouraged the local growers to cultivate Banglamoti on larger stretches of land because it was good enough to be exported.
He also said the department believed that the cultivation of Banglamoti could change the socio-economic situation of the farmers.
Talib Bashar Nayan, director of non-government organisation Unnayan Dhara, said their demonstrations on the high yielding and stress tolerant varieties BRRIdhan-50, BRRIdhan-55 and BINAdhan-8, 75 in total in the district, had encouraged farmers to cultivate these breeds.
According to DAE, this season 21,411 tonnes of Banglamoti was harvested on 5,125 hectares of land.
The DAE deputy director said the owners of the paddy-husking mills buy the rice at lower prices from the farmers, cut the rice into finer shapes using automatic cutting machines and sell in the bigger markets at prices similar to those of other breeds like the Miniket.
He advised the farmers to be more industrious and look to sell their crops to markets in the other districts.
