Golden paddy is catching the eye on the hillsides of Khagrachhari in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. From a distance it looks like golden rice smiling across the green, as ripe jhum paddy covers hill after hill, its heads swaying in the breeze and the sun.

Jhum farmers are now busy bringing the crop home. Harvesting starts at dawn, the paddy is threshed in the jhum hut, and farmers carry it home in thurong baskets. The rush can be seen across Khagrachhari at the end of the season.

Jhum farmers said the process starts at the end of April each year. First the hillside is burnt to clear weeds, then the soil is dug and seeds are sown. After three to four months of care, harvesting begins at the end of September and continues until the last week of October.

Jhum cultivation is one of the main sources of income for the small ethnic communities living in Guimara, Matiranga, Lakshmichhari, Mahalchhari, Dighinala, Panchhari and Ramgarh upazilas of Khagrachhari. After meeting their own needs they sell some of the crop to cover other family expenses.

Jhum farmers have called for government incentives along with fertiliser and seed. They say lower rainfall this year will cut the yield, and those with little capital also fear that pest attacks on the paddy will spoil the harvest. Many other jhum farmers, however, expect a good yield.

Besides paddy, turmeric, marfa, ginger, chilli, taro, sweet pumpkin, sesame, maize, yardlong beans and other vegetables are grown on jhum plots. The jhum farmers said their households run on the food grown there.

Kishore Kumar Majumder, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in Khagrachhari, said jhum crops meet the food needs of people in the region, and that production would increase several times if jhum were farmed with modern rather than traditional methods.

He said jhum paddy had been grown on 1,780 hectares of hill land in Khagrachhari this year, with a production target of 3,992 tonnes.

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