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CropsAt a meeting on rabi-season fertiliser supply with deputy commissioners and DAE deputy directors, Agriculture Minister Mohammad Amin Ur Rashid said new dealers will lose their licences for irregularities or harassing farmers, every shop must display prices and stock, and border districts must watch
Rooftop farmingSarabangla suggests neem oil, garlic and soap-water sprays for mealybugs, and turmeric, cinnamon, baking soda and diluted hydrogen peroxide against rot, without chemical pesticides, reminding gardeners that controlling pests and curing rot call for different remedies.
EnvironmentA study led by Chittagong University botanists for the research group ECHO identified 1,029 plant species on the Halda's banks, 517 medicinal and 23 endangered, warned that 100 more could become endangered without protection, and listed 29 sources of pollution.
VegetablesBean growing in Jarmandi village, Sundarganj, began about 16 years ago with Puti seed brought from Natore and now covers about 35 bighas farmed by at least 20 families; beans fetch Tk 50 a kg wholesale, but rising input costs are cutting profits.
OpinionPoet and essayist Md Belayet Hossain writes in Samakal that polythene and plastic left by visitors at remote Masangtoichha in Matiranga is washing down streams into rivers whose water is the main supply for hill communities. The views are the writer's own.
GalleryCoffee beans drying in a Bandarban yard, a Faridpur farmer tending murikata onions, ducks on a Nikli haor at dusk and fog over Panchagarh: the day's farm and nature pictures from Prothom Alo's photographers.
EnvironmentBird and wildlife specialist A N M Aminur Rahman of Gazipur Agricultural University photographed a crow-billed drongo, recorded fewer than ten times in Bangladesh, in Kuakata's casuarina forest; two have also been seen for several days at the National Botanical Garden in Mirpur.
In Rangapani village in Rangamati town, hill women are preparing land, sowing seed and weeding mixed plots of red amaranth, mustard greens, radish, aubergine, tomato, beans, pumpkin, coriander and maize, fed with compost they make themselves.
CookingBikrampur Mishtanna Bhandar, which grew out of a family ghee trade from the British era, now makes about 185 kinds of sweets in some 45 branches with about 300 staff, sourcing most of its milk, chhana, kheer and khoa from Munshiganj.
AgribusinessFood Minister Afroza Khanam told FAO's Bangladesh representative Xiaokun Shi that climate change makes it hard to store grain beyond six months, and sought help with modern storage, nutrition for women and children, and research on how well fortified rice works.
FisheriesHilsa are being caught in the Teesta and Brahmaputra in 11 upazilas of Kurigram, Gaibandha and Lalmonirhat, about 50 to 60 tonnes a year; fisheries officers say restoring river depth and giving fishers boats and gear could open up a northern hilsa fishery.
FisheriesThe Bangladesh Air Force flew helicopter surveillance missions from Dhaka, Jashore and Chattogram over rivers in eight districts and the Kutubdia coast from 8 to 29 October to protect spawning hilsa, using searchlights and night vision goggles after dark.
LivestockUniversity of Missouri projections compare a recovery in Mexican cattle imports with prolonged low imports after the New World screwworm restrictions; the low case raises prices and shifts beef production south.
WorldWFP needs $40 million to keep feeding refugees who fled conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and to raise rations from 45 to 100 percent of minimum needs through September 2027.
HealthThe government's contribution of SLE 158.4 million to the national school feeding programme run with WFP will pay for daily hot meals this school year, with food bought from smallholder farmers.
EnvironmentA study in Science Advances counts at least 107,356 wild animal, plant and fungus species in use and trade, and finds that international databases miss thousands, especially invertebrates and fungi.
AgribusinessThe Indian Rice Exporters' Federation says competition from ethanol distilleries and poultry-feed makers is driving up broken rice prices, raising the risk of export restrictions like the 2022 ban.
LivestockOctober shipments fell 3 percent from September and 8 percent from a year earlier; China, under a 55 percent tariff since June, took only 10,852 tonnes, and the full-year total now looks closer to 1.5 million tonnes.
LivestockA federal guide now defines clearing to include removing grasses, and with the continuing-use exemption gone, graziers ask whether restocking long-ungrazed paddocks could breach environment law.
AgribusinessCommerce minister Piyush Goyal told students in New Delhi that India has never allowed genetically modified imports and has given no dairy duty concessions in any free trade agreement.
CropsRapeseed and mustard covered 2.05 million hectares by 30 October against 3.807 million a year earlier, and total rabi sowing was 43.5 percent behind, though groundnut acreage rose more than 62 percent.
AgribusinessAfter the US moved to end South Africa's AGOA participation, Agbiz economist Wandile Sihlobo estimated an average rise of about 3.4 percentage points in US tariffs on farm exports worth $504 million in 2025.
LivestockBhekumuzi Dube of Freshmark Farming Enterprises in Filabusi moved from raising broilers to a breeding flock of about 150 birds and a 680-egg incubator after buyers began dictating prices.
CropsScientists at the Agricultural Research Council and the University of Pretoria say overreliance on glyphosate in no-till systems is driving resistance, and that a few surviving weeds are the first warning sign.
Watch
VideoRobert and Mary Troy, the fifth generation milking at Newtownshandrum, won the 2026 NDC and Kerrygold Quality Milk Awards with 425 cows, an SCC of 89,000 cells/ml and a herd in the national top 1% for breeding.
VideoIn the latest AgriView episode, agricultural economist Wandile Sihlobo asks whether the enlarged BRICS bloc is opening real markets for South African produce, or mostly producing talk.
VideoAt Bindhara in Panchbibi, Joypurhat, small dark-skinned Black Baby watermelons hang from bamboo trellises. The 60-day crop needs 50 grams of seed a bigha, yields 1,200 to 1,500 fruits or 4 to 4.5 tonnes, and at Tk 30 a kilo earns far more than other field crops.
In pictures
GalleryGlimpse, 3 November: fields, haors and nature in pictures1 photos
GalleryBangladesh on 1 November: paddy cut in the mist, hilsa back, whistling ducks1 photos
GalleryGlimpse, 31 October: pangas in the Padma, aus rice drying, a hill paddy path1 photos
GalleryEarly cauliflower floods Bogura's Mahasthan market and prices halve1 photos
GalleryCyclone Arnab flattens ripening paddy and idles fishers on the Andhra coast1 photos
GalleryIn pictures: Dumuria's wholesale vegetable market, from gher-dyke papaya to early beans1 photos
GalleryAn hour of light a day turns cave walls green in Chhattisgarh's Kanger ValleySection
HealthA new Zero Carbon Analytics study links the April 2024 heatwave to an estimated 5,515 additional preterm births in Bangladesh, at least 1,479 of which would not have occurred without human-caused climate change; 47 percent were in Dhaka and Chattogram divisions.
FisheriesFishers in Derai, Sunamganj, say a day of netting in the haor's rivers, canals and beels now yields little native fish, and blame heavy farm chemical use, poisoning of leased beels and lost breeding grounds.
EnvironmentA Kentucky State University field trial found Georgia Flame hot peppers took up cadmium, nickel, copper and zinc from amended soils while metal levels in the fruit stayed below permissible limits.
EnvironmentTwo reports released before COP31 warn that even a temporary overshoot of 1.5°C would cause lasting ice loss, while a UN-led study counts 6,119 deaths from glacial lake floods in India since 1835.
EnvironmentPrime Minister Tarique Rahman will attend the COP31 World Leaders Summit in Antalya, Turkey, on 11-12 November, where Bangladesh will call for climate finance as grants, not loans, and for accountability from the biggest emitters.
FisheriesPesticide poured into Larkibari beel in Singra, Natore, where villagers have farmed fish together for 40 years, killed about Tk 4 lakh worth of fish overnight; the farmers blame a dispute over control of the wetland.
