When the month of Falgun comes, the sweet scent of lychee buds spreads through every village in Ishwardi. Hundreds of orchards are covered in clusters of yellow buds. But this year the picture is completely different: there are hardly any buds on the lychee trees.

The familiar scent of the buds is missing too, and young leaves are sprouting instead. Orchard owners, farmers and traders fear a crop failure because of the poor budding. They say no one has seen lychee buds in such a sorry state in the last five decades.

Agriculture officials and farmers blame the weather for the poor budding. But the upazila agriculture department says there is still time for buds to come, and some trees have already started budding.

Lychee is the main cash crop of the Ishwardi area. Lychees worth Tk 450-500 crore are produced in the upazila every year, and the livelihoods of more than a lakh people in the area depend on lychee farming.

Visits to Manikanagar, Mirkamari, Char Mirkamari, Kadimpara and Aotapara, the upazila's villages known as "lychee villages", found new leaves instead of buds on the trees in hundreds of orchards. When new leaves sprout on a tree, buds do not come, so growers have expressed doubts about lychee production. Although 17 days of Falgun had nearly passed, growers were not tending their orchards or using fertiliser, pesticide or the medicines used for budding. In other years growers are busy tending the orchards at this time; this year the orchards are silent.

Growers said that where an orchard has 100 lychee trees, only 10-20 have budded, and the amount of bud is also very low. They have never seen so few buds before and cannot understand why it has happened suddenly this year, though they believe the weather may be behind this year's bud failure.

Abdul Jalil Kitab, alias Lichu Kitab, a national award-winning lychee farmer from Mirkamari village, told Jago News: "I have been growing lychee for 45 years. There has never been such a disaster. It is not just me; this is the state of lychee farming across the country. If anything is to blame, it is first the changed weather. I doubt whether lychee can be grown well in future while adjusting to the changing weather. I don't think even 10 per cent of the lychee yield will be had this year."

"Lakhs of people are directly and indirectly involved in lychee farming, and they will face the greatest danger this time. I think the government should take steps on this now, so that lychee yields can be improved in the changed weather. Otherwise, within the next five years lychee farming will head towards extinction," he said.

Orchard owner Nayeb Munshi of Manikanagar village said: "There are hardly any lychee buds in this area this year. Buds can be seen on one or two trees; almost all the others have sprouted new leaves."

Liton Biswas, a lychee grower from Manikanagar Purbapara village, described the same situation to Jago News: "In my lifetime I have not seen such a poor lychee crop. People here depend on lychee, and getting by will be very hard for us this year. Ten to 20 per cent of trees have budded; the rest have no buds."

Mostafa Zaman, a lychee grower from the same village, said: "In the last 50 years I have never seen lychee in such a bad state. I can't work out what will become of us this time."

Upazila sub-assistant agriculture officer Ekhlasur Rahman said: "Lychee trees do not bud equally every year; some years there is less, some years more. But this year trees have budded less than in other years. This could be for genetic reasons. I hope next year there will be more and better budding on all the trees."

Ishwardi upazila agriculture officer Mita Sarkar told Jago News: "Ishwardi is famous for lychee farming. Lychee has been grown on 3,100 hectares in this upazila. This year too the trees have budded, but less than in other years. We assume this is because of adverse weather."

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