Cauliflower farming in the Barind tract has opened up new doors of success as most of the growers are now making profit by dint of their bumper production.
Shatahar Ali, 46, has already sold the vegetable worth around Tk 80,000 from his farming field in the current season, inspiring many of his co-villagers to follow the same path for their income-generations.
Ali, a farmer of Chuniapara village under Durgapur upazila in Rajshahi district, has brought one and half bigha of land under the advanced variety of cauliflower farming spending around Tk 20,000.
Each piece of the winter vegetables is being sold at Tk 45-50 from his farming field directly at present while one piece of it is being sold at Tk 70-80 in retail markets.
“I’m hoping to sell cauliflower worth over Tk 1.5 lakh from my field this season,” said Ali with a smiling face.
Upazila Agriculture Officer Moshiur Rahman said they had set a target of bringing 865 hectares of land under the vegetables farming during the current winter season, but the cash crops were cultivated on more land compared to the target in the upazila consisting seven unions and one pourashava.
Of those, cauliflower has been cultivated on around 60 hectares of land and the dominating areas are Joynagar, Kanpara, Chuniapara, Kolonhati and Bajuskhali, he added.
The farmers are very happy because they are getting both lucrative yield and price side by side by selling their harvested vegetables from their field directly.
After meeting up the local demands, two to three trucks of the early variety vegetable are being sent to Dhaka, Sylhet, Comilla, Chittagong and Barisal in two days every week regularly.
Wholesale trader Fazley Hossain said demand for cauliflower in Durgapur is higher than any other areas in different outside districts.
Agriculturalist Rahman said the early variety cauliflower has delighted many of the farmers in this region as they have got a good chance of recouping their losses caused by the adverse impact of novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic situation and devastating flood.
Farmers are successfully producing early varieties of winter vegetables like cauliflower, cabbage, radish, carrot, beet, turnip, tomato, leafy spinach, red spinach and receiving lucrative prices in the wholesale markets.
Hundreds of farmers like Shatahar Ali in Rajshahi division, including its vast barind tract, have become happy after attaining good yield and lucrative market price of the early winter vegetables.
He said vegetable farming in both commercial and homestead methods are gradually gaining popularity in the vast Barind tract as many people are seen humming towards the farming leaving behind the high-irrigation consuming crops amid government and non-government initiatives.
On behalf of the ‘Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM)’ project, more than 12.58 lakh community people of 2.66 lakh households are being motivated and encouraged towards vegetable farming to reduce the pressure on underground water in the high-barind areas.
Meanwhile, varieties of early winter vegetables have been appearing in both retail and wholesale markets here abundantly making both the sellers and buyers happy for the last couple of weeks like previous years.
Sirajul Islam, Additional Director of Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE), said over 60,000 hectares of land have already been brought under vegetable cultivation in the region this year. The production target has been set at around 23.56 tons from each hectare of land.
