Farmer Jaynuddin Khan sells tree leaves, and the money has brought comfort to his household. He says he spends only Tk 40,000 and sells about Tk 12 lakh worth of leaves a year. These are not ordinary leaves but bay leaf (tejpata), a spice crop that Jaynuddin Khan of Kadirkol village in Kaliganj upazila, Jhenaidah, grows commercially.

Jaynuddin said he started in 2008 by planting 100 trees on one bigha. He now has 400 trees on four bighas. Seeing his success, two more farmers in his village have started growing bay leaf commercially.

At Kadirkol village in Sundarpur-Durgapur union of Kaliganj upazila, Jaynuddin said he visited neighbouring India in 2007 and saw bay leaf being grown there. He became very keen to grow it, but could not find saplings anywhere. Then a friend told him saplings were available at a place called Bejerdanga in Khulna. In 2008 he brought 100 saplings from Bejerdanga at Tk 200 each and planted them on a rather overgrown plot beside his house, and kept tending them.

After four years the branches were full of leaves, and he began picking them. Since then he has harvested and sold leaves twice a year. Because it was profitable, he planted more trees. He now has 400 bay leaf trees on four bighas; at 46 decimals to the bigha, 100 saplings can be planted per bigha. He has spread the crop from the overgrown land to good arable land and says he is expanding it every year.

Jaynuddin Khan said the land must first be ploughed well, then organic fertiliser spread, and the saplings planted with a little chemical fertiliser. Goats and cattle do not eat the tree, and since the leaves grow high on the branches the risk of theft is low.

He said a tree starts giving leaves four years after planting and will keep giving them for up to 50 years. Each of his trees now yields 20 kg of leaves a year, which sells at Tk 60 a kg. With this, he says, his 400 trees bring in about Tk 12 lakh of leaves. He now spends Tk 100 per tree to get the leaves. The work is light, he said, and once planted a tree yields for most of a lifetime, which is why he grows it commercially. In the first year he sold three maunds of leaves; he now sells up to 12 maunds and hopes to sell 20 maunds next season. Jaynuddin Khan is a farmer by profession with 18 bighas of arable land.

He said bay leaf trees bear no fruit and cannot be propagated by cuttings or grafts on their own. A kabab chini tree is needed: saplings are raised from kabab chini fruit, and bay leaf is grafted onto those saplings.

Abul Kalam of Kadirkol said he started growing bay leaf after seeing Jaynuddin. He planted 35 decimals in the first year, is getting good leaves and plans to grow more. Another farmer, Mizanur Rahman, has planted bay leaf on 10 decimals of his homestead.

Kripangshu Kumar, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in Jhenaidah, said it is a very profitable crop. People in the area do not grow it commercially, but Jaynuddin Khan of Kadirkol does, and the department supports him in various ways.

Source: Online Desk. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.