After finishing his studies, Mazharul Islam Naim searched desperately for a job. Running around eventually wore him out, and then the coronavirus arrived, deepening his despair. But Naim refused to sit idle. He had to do something, and he wanted to plant a fruit orchard — but his family had no land.

During the pandemic he leased a plot of fallow land and built a fruit orchard, and he has not looked back since. His orchard now has 6,000 dragon fruit plants, with rows heavy with ripe and unripe fruit. Papaya, guava and other fruit are also grown, and he keeps more than 50 goats.

Mazharul Islam Naim now works as an ICT lecturer at a madrasa and tends the orchard around his job. Several local workers regularly pick, sort, pack and market the fruit. Naim's orchard is in Madhya Char Ramani Mohan village of Sadar upazila, where in 2021 he leased 320 decimals of land to set up the commercial orchard.

At first he invested Tk 25 lakh with the help of his father, Nazrul Islam Khan. With no formal education in agriculture, he used technology and online knowledge to build Khan Agro Park, planting guava, dragon fruit and papaya orchards one after another. The orchard has grown steadily.

At the orchard, plants twined around rows of posts are full of flowers and unripe, half-ripe and ripe dragon fruit. Workers cut ripe fruit into buckets while others carry baskets to the store and pile them up, where wholesalers weigh and collect the fruit. The investment now stands at half a crore taka, and dragon fruit sales this season could reach Tk 15-20 lakh.

Local farmer Abul Hossain said: "Dragon fruit has few diseases and a good market price, so it is easy to make a profit. If farmers get proper training and technical support, more will take up dragon fruit. We once thought it was a foreign fruit that would not grow here. Now our village's Naim has surprised us."

"During Covid I learned about dragon fruit farming from YouTube and online. I started with an investment of about Tk 25 lakh. Now it provides jobs for workers, and people come from far away to see it," said Mazharul Islam Naim.

His father, Nazrul Islam Khan, said: "I look after the orchard, supervise it and handle marketing. It was new to us at first, but now we have more experience and yields are good. Demand for dragon fruit is strong. At first it sold wholesale at Tk 300-400 a kg; now it sells at Tk 150-300 a kg."

Mohammad Manjur Hossain, training officer at the Lakshmipur district Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), said: "Young entrepreneur Naim's dream and technology-based planning have transformed fallow land. They have also created jobs and new farm-based economic opportunities. Dragon fruit farming is not only profitable; it can bring a revolution in agriculture and rural development."

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