Mranuching Marma, 31, of Kanungo Para in Panchhari, Khagrachhari, is head teacher of a private primary school. She used to collect mango stones from neighbours and plant them beside her house. The nursery that grew out of that habit now earns her about Tk 20 lakh a year from sapling sales.
It began in mid-2020. Covid had shut the schools and stopped her salary, and later her private tuition dried up too. She went to market to buy saplings for a mango orchard, found them too expensive and decided to raise her own. In the first year she sold about Tk 12,000 worth. Watching her husband, Uching Marma, a schoolteacher, and through her own trial and error, she then learned grafting.
Her one-acre nursery on a hillside about a kilometre from home now holds 50,000 saplings: mango, plus several varieties of litchi, guava, latkan (burmese grape) and year-round jackfruit, with a banana plot beside it. She works with three labourers and expects sales of Tk 20 to 25 lakh this year.
Because the land is her own and cow dung is cheap locally, costs are low, and she sells mango saplings for Tk 40 to Tk 300 depending on the variety, also through a Facebook page, Green Care Nursery. She works in the nursery every morning before school and returns after classes. Good saplings, she says, come from doing the work with your own hands.
Romita Dewan, a teacher in Panchhari, bought 100 saplings of different varieties from her four years ago; this year every tree fruited, she said, and she has come back for new varieties. Panchhari upazila agriculture officer Abdus Salam called the nursery an inspiration and said the department would give advice and support if asked; he plans to visit soon.
The report is by Jayanti Dewan of Prothom Alo.
Photo: Masum Ibn Musa / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Prothom Alo
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