The rise in the price of diesel has pushed up the cost of growing rice in Sirajganj, where diesel-driven machines are used at almost every stage: land preparation, irrigation, harvesting, threshing and transport. Farmers say paddy prices have not risen to match, and fear a loss rather than a profit on this aman crop.
By the farmers' own reckoning, one bigha of paddy takes about 33 litres of diesel from transplanting to harvest. At Tk 115 a litre that came to about Tk 3,800; at the current Tk 135 it is about Tk 4,460, an extra Tk 660 or so a bigha for fuel alone.
The district office of the Department of Agricultural Extension says aman was planted on 192,000 hectares in Sirajganj this season, and 52,708 hectares of it were irrigated with diesel engines, about 27.45 percent of the district's aman land.
Rafiqul Islam, who farms in the Telkupi area of Ullapara, irrigates 10 bighas with a diesel machine. He said diesel for that land used to cost about Tk 38,000 and now costs about Tk 44,500. Another farmer, Abdur Rahman Sheikh, said pump owners have announced higher charges for irrigation water, and that harvesting, threshing and carting paddy home by diesel harvester and trolley will cost more too.
The Ullapara upazila agriculture office puts the cost of producing one maund of paddy at about Tk 800, while farmers say it is really Tk 900 to Tk 1,000. Sujabat Ali of Hatpangasi village in Raiganj said even the season's best paddy price is about Tk 1,000 a maund, so the selling price falls short of the cost. Farmer Tajimuddin said fertiliser and irrigation had already become dearer, and wondered what boro would cost if aman was this expensive.
Boro seedbeds are due to be prepared in late November, and boro needs irrigation for the whole season. Vegetables, maize, mustard and wheat also depend on diesel irrigation pumps and farm machinery, from the field to the market.
Monjur A Mowla, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension in Sirajganj, said there was no denying that the fuel price rise had increased farmers' production costs, and that farmers could gain somewhat if the government raised paddy prices with everything taken into account. Agricare24 published the report on the basis of information from Bangla Tribune.
Photo: Ayman Nakib Badhan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Agricare24
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