Land that stays under water for four to five months a year cannot be farmed the usual way. In Nabinagar, Brahmanbaria, farmers are now growing vegetables on such waterlogged, fallow land using floating platforms, known locally as the dhali method, putting idle land to use and earning extra income.
The upazila agriculture office says about 8,500 hectares of farmland in Nabinagar, an area of haors and wetlands, stay waterlogged for long periods in the monsoon. Boro rice and other crops grow there in other seasons, but most of it lies fallow while it is flooded. For the past two years, on the department's advice, vegetables have been grown on floating beds at Ibrahimpur, Natghar, Rasullabad, Barikandi, Salimganj, Nabinagar East and Satmora, on about 20 bighas this season.
Farmers build a trellis on a bamboo frame and grow climbing vegetables on it: bottle gourd, ash gourd, cucumber and bitter gourd. Vegetables are scarce in the market during the monsoon, so prices are good. They say the method needs no separate irrigation, suffers comparatively little from pests and disease, and costs less over time because the same frame can be reused.
Emran Mia of Rasullabad union has bottle gourd and ash gourd on 20 decimals, and has already sold about Tk 15,000 worth of bottle gourd from 15 decimals, with about two more months of picking to come. Ismail Mia of Ibrahimpur has used the method for two years; before that he could grow nothing on his land for several months of the monsoon.
Sujon Mia tried it for the first time this year on 25 decimals after seeing it on YouTube and contacting the upazila agriculture office for training. Selling water spinach, cucumber and bottle gourd, he has already earned about Tk 30,000 this season.
Support comes through the Department of Agricultural Extension's ongoing FRIP project and its project to spread sustainable farm technology in the Cumilla region, and more than 200 farmers have been trained. Nabinagar upazila agriculture officer Md Jahangir Alam Liton said the department had provided demonstrations, floating structures, seed and fertiliser along with training, and that sub-assistant agriculture officers supervise the work regularly.
The report was first published by Protidiner Bangladesh and republished by Agricare24.
Photo: Nazmulhuqrussell / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Source: Agricare24
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