People on the chars of Ishwardi in Pabna have changed their fortunes by growing bananas commercially on hundreds of hectares of once-barren char land. The familiar hardship of char life is gone. Banana farming has transformed the lives of char farmers and created work for thousands of day labourers.

Hundreds of hectares of land in Lakshmikunda union, on the Padma river that flows through Ishwardi upazila, were once a vast sandbank. Across the wide char, nothing but kash grass and sand could once be seen. Farmers grew groundnuts and other crops on parts of it, but did not make much profit. As recently as five or six years ago, this land lay uncultivated.

Now the Padma chars are green all over. Sabri, Sagar, Amritasagar and other banana varieties are grown commercially, and the chars bustle with hundreds of people: banana growers, day labourers, traders, drivers and transport workers. Banana farming has changed the face of the chars and brought dream-like social and economic progress. Many have replaced mud houses with brick ones, farmers have bought tractors and other modern machinery, and many who grew bananas on leased land have become landowners.

According to the upazila agriculture office, bananas have been grown on 1,840 hectares in the upazila this year, 1,800 hectares of them in the Padma char villages of Lakshmikunda union. Across the chars of Kamalpur, Dadapur, Lakshmikunda, Koikunda, Charkuruliya, Shantinagar and Digrir Char, farmers have grown only bananas and no other crop.

Kamal Hossain, a banana grower in Charkuruliya village, said: "After my studies I worked at a private college. As it was not MPO-listed, I came back to the village, thinking I would start a business. When I came back, I saw that many people were profiting from bananas, so I became interested too. Banana farming has changed the fortunes of hundreds of people like us."

Akkas Ali of Kamalpur char said: "I have grown bananas on 60 bigha, and made a profit of about Tk 50,000 a bigha. Banana farming has changed the fortunes of the farmers on this char. Countless farmers here are now financially well off. There is hardly any crop other than bananas on the char now."

Moktar Hossain and Motaleb Hossain of Digrir Char said: "We are losing out in one area: the rising price of fertiliser. Apart from that, the yield is good if there is no hailstorm or strong storm. A virus has now appeared on some plants, and we are trying to control that too. There are some obstacles, but farmers are profiting from bananas."

Upazila agriculture officer Mita Sarkar said: "Bananas have yielded well on the Padma chars. Because farmers are profiting, cultivation is increasing every year. The agriculture department is giving farmers all kinds of advice and help for banana farming."

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