Afrahim Badsha Manik, the youngest son of Shamsuddin Ahmed, has made a success of growing litchi in Madhabbati village of Biral upazila in Dinajpur district. He took his father's litchi farming as his model and has become a successful agricultural entrepreneur.

Afrahim Badsha studied power technology at Dinajpur Government Polytechnic Institute. He then worked as a sub-assistant engineer at various organisations. At one point he left his job and set up a firm in Dhaka called Power Technology Engineering. When business turned bad during the coronavirus pandemic, he scaled the firm down and turned his attention to becoming an agricultural entrepreneur.

He then concentrated on litchi farming, as his father had shown him, in his home area of Biral upazila. This year he has a litchi orchard on about 10 acres, with some 450 trees. The yield came up to expectations, although some fruit was damaged by the intense heatwave. Even so, he hopes to sell litchi worth about Tk 50 lakh.

"Bangladesh is an agricultural country. I have taken the path my father showed me. After the coronavirus period I spent time in my own area. Besides the family litchi orchard, I leased some land and grew litchi," Afrahim Badsha said of his move from engineering to farming.

"My orchard has also created work for local people. Workers pick the litchi on contract. Wholesale buyers collect the fruit straight from the orchard and send it to different parts of the country," he said.

Noting that wholesale buyers have shown particular interest in his orchard's litchi this year, he said: "Modern technology needs to be brought in to expand litchi farming. At the same time, if the government built cold storage, it would help farmers preserve litchi."

He believes that if litchi farmers could get loans on easy terms and the area's roads and communications were improved, farmers' financial hardship would ease, marketing litchi would become easier and new entrepreneurs would emerge.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.