The soft white pith inside banana stems that are cut down after the bunch is harvested, and the banana blossom, have given rise to an alternative trade in the villages. Many marginal workers and traders make a living by collecting what households and growers throw away and selling it to big wholesale markets including Dhaka's, Dinajpur TV's agriculture desk reports.
The business began about 30 years ago with a local elder, who sent the pith of discarded stems to Dhaka. Today 10 to 15 local collectors follow his lead, cutting stems and blossoms from plantations. Even where growers do not sell their plantations, the traders collect the stems once the bunches are cut and send them on.
Traders say peeling a stem to get at the white pith takes five or six minutes. The foot-long soft core is cut to size for market, and each stem yields three to five pieces.
Each blossom is bought from households for Tk 10. With transport and processing it costs Tk 15-16 by the time it reaches the wholesale market, where it sells for Tk 25 to 30. When households bring blossoms themselves, traders pay Tk 100 for ten. The produce goes to Karwan Bazar, Jatrabari and Gazipur, and from there retailers and hawkers sell it in the lanes from vans or baskets on their heads. Traders say processed blossom and pith are also entering the export chain to the Middle East and Europe.
Besides home cooking, restaurants want it for banana blossom fried with prawns. Seventeen to eighteen workers now depend on the trade directly.
Since social media spread word of the money in it, many households are less willing to hand over stems or blossoms, and some let the stems rot in the plantation to use as organic manure. Traders say the business carries market swings and financial risk like any other. For banana growers it shows how a by-product they once threw away can find a price in the market.
The report is from Dinajpur TV's agriculture desk.
Photo: A banana blossom, Muhammad Mahdi Karim / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5)
Source: Dinajpur TV
Comments
(0)