High-value fruit and off-season vegetables hold promise, but excessive chemicals, disease and a lack of institutional support have put ordinary growers in difficulty. That is the case veteran grower and organiser Harunur Rashid Musa makes in a report by Dinajpur TV's agriculture desk.
In a polyhouse built on 33 decimals with government support, he grows high-priced off-season vegetables such as summer tomatoes, early capsicum and carrots. Heavy monsoon rain ruins vegetables in open fields, but under the controlled cover crops grow normally and fetch far higher prices out of season. In the field he grows anarkali, avocado and dragon fruit commercially, and is trying year-round jackfruit, abiu, rambutan and longan. Because these fruits need long-term care and investment, he grows them on his own land rather than leased plots, and uses netting to protect ripe dragon fruit from birds.
Dragon fruit, however, is in a prolonged slump. According to the report, heavy use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides has shortened plants' lives and brought serious stem diseases, and consumers have turned away because of excessive artificial hormones in the fruit. Fruit that once sold for Tk 500 to 600 a kilo now fetches Tk 50 to 60, too little to cover costs, and many large growers are pulling out. The report calls for government monitoring to stop harmful hormones and field research by scientists on the diseases.
Musa travelled to all 64 districts while in class nine and later studied modern farming in 11 countries. In 2022 he founded the Bangladesh Farmers Association to protect smallholders' rights, and he has put 28 specific proposals to the government.
One is a 'farmers' bank', since smallholders and agriculture graduates complain that complicated conditions keep them from borrowing from the existing agricultural bank; it would lend only to genuine farmers holding a farm ID card, not to traders or companies. He also stresses on-farm demonstration units for organic fertiliser: the government spends heavily subsidising imported chemical fertiliser, while farm-made organic fertiliser protects soil fertility and produces food free of poisons.
Reporting: Agriculture desk, Dinajpur TV
Source: Dinajpur TV
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