Bashir Ahmed of Malgara village, Toitong union, Pekua upazila, Cox's Bazar, sold one of his father's four bighas to go to Malaysia. He lost his visa, spent two months in jail and came home empty-handed six years ago. Working as a day labourer in a neighbour's cucumber field got him interested, and four years ago he planted three bighas of his own. He now sells several lakh taka of cucumbers a year and has bought two battery-run autorickshaws. More than a hundred farmers in Malgara have turned their fortunes round the same way.
The upazila agriculture office says about 24 hectares in Pekua are under cucumber, 15 of them in Malgara. The land used to grow paddy, but poor yields put farmers off rice. Upazila agriculture officer Mohammad Faruk Hossain Chowdhury said that after visiting the fields and testing the soil, his office advised them to try cucumbers. According to the district Department of Agricultural Extension, Cox's Bazar has 126 hectares of cucumber this season, the most in Chakaria with 30, and sales so far total Tk 16.87 crore.
Farmers say the season starts in mid-July and sales run to mid-October. About 5,000 seeds go into one kani (about one and a quarter bighas). Plants flower 50 to 55 days after emerging, and cucumbers can then be picked every two or three days for 30 to 40 days, 10 to 15 times from each plant. Each weighs 800 grams to 1.2 kilograms on average; they now sell at Tk 30 a kilogram, up to Tk 1,200 a maund.
By farmers' reckoning a kani costs Tk 80,000 to Tk 1 lakh a season and brings in Tk 5 to 6 lakh. Malgara grows mainly a local variety that yields more and grows larger. Farmer Kamal Hossain has five kanis; on each picking day a kani gives 35 to 50 maunds, sold for Tk 42,000 to 60,000. The agriculture office estimates about 15 tonnes are picked in Malgara every day.
At dawn farmers carry their cucumbers on shoulder poles two or three kilometres to Jumpara market, where wholesalers from Chattogram, Cox's Bazar, Chakaria and Pekua are already waiting. Rafiq Mia, a Chattogram wholesaler, said the area's cucumbers are in demand for their size and taste, and better transport would bring more buyers. Several hundred men and women work in the fields; Khadija Begum, widowed by a road accident, started on Tk 300 a day and now earns Tk 600 to 700 depending on the work.
The report is by Samakal's Cox's Bazar correspondent Ibrahim Khalil Mamun and Pekua correspondent Hiru Alam.
Photo: H. Zell / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: samakal
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