Farmers have achieved tremendous success by cultivating peanuts in the Padma river at Daulatpur in Kushtia.
They have attained success by cultivating groundnuts - or what they call the golden crop - near the vast plains of the Padma River of Ramkrishnapur, Chilmari, Maricha and the Filipnagar union of the upazila.
The poor people of the country have experienced prosperity by cultivating this crop.
They will be more interested in cultivating almonds if they get government patronage.
According to Daulatpur upazila's Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) statistics, 415 hectares are set to meet groundnut cultivation targets in the current season.
But this has surpassed to over 750 hectares, yielding at least five maunds per bigha of land.
Saidur Rahman, a farmer of Maricha union's Bairagir Char village, said earlier, the banks of the Padma River were not suitable for growing any kind of crops.
"But some farmers decided to try and cultivate groundnuts a few years ago," he added, "Currently a maund of groundnuts are sold in the markets for Tk2,500. After covering their expenses, the farmers are coming out of poverty, gradually."
Farmers like Saidur are anticipating active support from the government to expand groundnut cultivation in the area.
Shariful Islam, another farmer from the same village, said continuous cultivation on the banks of the Padma will not only result in farmers like him moving out of poverty, but also make the land more arable.
Groundnut farmers also said minimal rain has not favoured its cultivation until now, but even after that they have been able to grow six maunds of groundnuts on per bigha of land.
Jalal Uddin, a groundnut farmer from Bairagir Char said this cautious approach has been taken this year to prevent incurring losses, as torrential rainfall often damaged previous groundnut yields.
Extracting groundnuts usually begins in the Bengali month of Ashar. Expense of groundnut cultivation, including fertilizers, seeds and labour costs, range between Tk6,000-7,000 per bigha.
Labourers who toil in extracting groundnuts are also happy with the yield this season, as they often earn between Tk250-300 per day, said Ayesha Khatun, one such labourer.
Md Sajib Al Maruf, officer at Daulatpur upazila DAE office, said over 200 farmers in the district were provided with incentives and training this year on groundnut cultivation, and the results are highly satisfactory.
Although he lamented the lack of rainfall, he said farmers were still able to sell their produce at Tk2,400-2,500 per maund.
