With the students' anti-discrimination movement on one side and a continuing curfew on the other, farmers in Meherpur are in deep trouble with the vegetables in their fields. No buyers are coming from other districts, crops are rotting where they grow, and prices have fallen by half.

Farmers say they will face heavy losses if the situation continues.

Fields across Meherpur Sadar upazila are planted with bottle gourd, snake gourd, young pumpkin, yardlong beans, pointed gourd and papaya, and it is now harvest time. Yet at the height of the season there are no buyers in the district. Because of the students' anti-discrimination movement and the curfew, no traders are coming from Dhaka, Chattogram, Barishal or Sylhet. The local market is now the farmers' only hope, and there too supply exceeds demand, so they are not getting a price for their vegetables. Crops are rotting in the fields, and far from recovering production costs, farmers fear heavy losses.

Habibur Rahman, a farmer from Fatehpur village in Meherpur Sadar upazila, said: "I have grown bottle gourd on one bigha and yardlong beans on 10 kathas. Before the student movement I sold yardlong beans at Tk 70 to 80 a kg; now they sell for Tk 40 to 45 a kg. I used to sell bottle gourds at Tk 40 to 50 each; now I have to sell them at Tk 15 to 20." He blamed the student movement and the curfew, saying no buyers are now coming into the district from outside.

Farmer Saiful Islam said: "This year I grew snake gourd on one bigha, and the yield has been good. Before the curfew I sold snake gourd at Tk 30 to 35 a kg; now it sells for Tk 10 to 12 a kg, and even then there are no buyers. If this goes on, I will make a loss on snake gourd."

Trader Abdus Salam said that because of the movement and the curfew, truckloads of vegetables cannot reach Dhaka, and transport owners do not want to provide trucks. That is why farmers are in this situation.

However, Bijoy Krishna Haldar, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), said efforts are under way, with the administration's help, to send the vegetables grown here to Dhaka and other districts after meeting the district's own needs.

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