Magura's date palm sap collectors prepare trees as costs rise

In mid-November 2025, with the first cool winds of winter, sap collectors in Magura, known as gachhis, began cleaning, trimming and scraping their date palms, Jagonews24 reported on 19 November. Demand for their labour was rising from village to village. The district is so closely tied to date palm sap that a saying goes: "Magura's fame, the date palm's sap."

Magura, in Khulna division, covers 1,039.10 square kilometres. Banglapedia lists four upazilas, Magura Sadar, Mohammadpur, Shalikha and Sreepur; its main rivers are the Gorai-Madhumati, the Nabaganga and the Kumar, and farming is its main source of income.

The palm tapped in Bangladesh is the wild date palm, Phoenix sylvestris; its sap is drunk fresh or boiled into jaggery. The health directorate's Nipah guideline describes the method: a V-shaped cut at the head of the stem, with a pot below to catch the sap.

A Khalek, a gachhi from Khamarpara in Sreepur upazila, said the cutting had begun and sap would flow in seven to eight days; his wife then boils it into jaggery. The sap grows sweeter as it gets colder, the report said, and households use it and patali jaggery for pitha, puli and payesh.

Daud Mia of Barabil has lived on date palm sap and jaggery for about 20 years; the family trade is still his household's main income. "The trees have dwindled and the price of everything has gone up. It's a struggle to support a family of seven. I have to buy wood and firewood to make jaggery, which raises costs," he said. Technology, he added, would make the work much easier.

Khalek called the work very hard, with almost no profit. Chhen, dao and knives cost more, pots far more, and though jaggery prices had risen a little he feared a big loss that season.

Shariful, a farmer from Barabila in Sreepur, taps his own palms and others' on a share basis, makes jaggery commercially, gives owners their share and sells what his family does not need. "Cutting date palms is hard work, but when I see the pots full of sap in the morning I forget the hardship," he said. With materials far dearer, he expected jaggery prices to rise.

The Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) counted about 1.05 lakh date palms in Magura that season, on about 200 hectares. Their number was falling in all four upazilas, as trees were burned in brick kilns and gachhis were scarce.

"Date palms are used as fuel in brick kilns, so the trees are disappearing day by day," said retired teacher Manju Sheikh. Gachhis once carried pitchers of sap on bamboo poles from village to village on winter mornings, he recalled. Most winter pitha use date palm jaggery, he said, and many people were becoming self-reliant by selling it.

The season also carries a health risk. Bangladesh's national Nipah guideline names raw date palm sap contaminated with the virus as one of two main routes by which Nipah reaches people: fruit bats drink from the pots at night and can foul the sap with urine or faeces. Its key message: do not drink raw date palm sap; boiled sap or molasses is safe.

The World Health Organization says Nipah was first recognised in Bangladesh in 2001, with outbreaks nearly every year since. It kills an estimated 40% to 75% of those infected, and there is no specific drug or vaccine. WHO advises covering sap collection sites, for example with bamboo sap skirts, to keep bats away, and boiling freshly collected juice.

Photo: Md. Sakibul Hasan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, Banglapedia, Directorate General of Health Services (National Guideline for Management, Prevention and Control of Nipah Virus Infection, 2011), World Health Organization (Nipah virus fact sheet), Wikipedia