Sayeed Sarkar has become a successful agricultural entrepreneur by growing dragon fruit. The young man from Gourinathpur village in Maheshpur upazila of Jhenaidah has made his mark not only through farming but also through the fruit trade and selling saplings. He left his job to grow dragon fruit and it has paid off handsomely. Through producing saplings, selling fruit and marketing, he is now a successful trader as well as an entrepreneur.

The road was not easy at first. He worked as a labourer on his cousin's land, and heard plenty of cutting remarks for leaving his job to farm. Despite the scorn and mockery of people he knew, and several rounds of losses, he kept growing dragon fruit. His fruit now goes to cities across the country and is also exported.

Gourinathpur bazar in Maheshpur upazila has more than a hundred wholesale dragon fruit depots, and Sayeed Sarkar's is one of the leading ones. He started the business in 2022 with a fruit depot named Aayan Fal Bhandar. As trade grew within a short time, his elder brother joined him, and there was no looking back.

Sayeed Sarkar told Jagonews that until 2021 he held a good position at a private development organisation. But as demand for foreign fruit grew in the domestic market, he became interested in growing improved foreign fruit with modern technology. With that in mind he left his job in 2021 and started growing dragon fruit on a bigha and a half of his own land. At the same time he worked as a labourer on his cousin's land. In late 2022 he opened the fruit depot at Gourinathpur bazar, selling fruit from his own orchard and buying from other farmers to supply districts around the country.

"I worked as a labourer on other people's land. I got Tk 400 a day in wages, but that was not enough to run the household. People said all sorts of things about me for leaving my job to farm. I did not give up," Abu Sayeed Sarkar said. "After I started growing dragon fruit in October 2021, I began producing saplings myself. I sold them from a van in Jhenaidah town, Kaliganj, Jashore and Chuadanga, and sent dragon fruit saplings to different districts by courier."

"Selling dragon fruit saplings, I often came home at the end of the day with a loss. But I did not lose heart. I struggled hard like that for about two years. Then I opened the fruit depot and sales went up. I made videos of the depot and the orchard and posted them on Facebook. I had a Facebook page. People saw my videos and ordered dragon fruit saplings and fruit. That is how I started," he said.

"I now grow dragon fruit and guava on about 12 bighas. Dragon fruit orchards have grown from my saplings in Gazipur, Chandpur, Nimsar in Cumilla, Khagrachhari, Munshiganj, Faridpur and other parts of the country. My depot now trades 1,500 to 2,000 kg of dragon fruit a day on average, and the orchard has also yielded well," Sayeed Sarkar said.

Speaking about the depot's trade, he told Jagonews: "There is really no such thing as being unemployed. People are never without work. Young people can succeed if they take the initiative to do something of their own with a small amount of capital. The start is never something big. You have to begin with something small, little by little, and one day you can grow."

"As an entrepreneur you can create work for more people. Many people now work at my depot and in my orchards, and they have found employment too. For me, being an agricultural entrepreneur is safe and something to be proud of. Instead of chasing jobs, young people should do something of their own," Sayeed Sarkar said.

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