Suman Ahmed of Bailakhali village in Chandpasha union, Babuganj upazila, Barishal, has built an integrated farm on the very land his father, Abdul Hamid Howlader, once farmed as a sharecropper. As a seventh-grader, stung by a landowner's rebuke of his father, he resolved to farm land of his own; Prothom Alo reports that he has fulfilled that vow at 72.
Poverty ended his schooling, and he worked in Dhaka as a labourer and painter. In 1982 he went to Kuwait as a painter, later working in Qatar, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand before moving to South Africa in 2006. With his savings he bought 123 decimals next to his home and another 50 decimals a little further away. He returned in 2019, dug a pond for fish and planted about a hundred papaya seedlings on its banks.
His two farms now cover 173 decimals, with about 1,600 papaya trees and three ponds, along with brinjal, sponge gourd and pumpkin. He has sold papaya worth Tk 17 lakh this year and expects a profit of at least Tk 8 lakh. Farm income was Tk 6 lakh in 2023, Tk 15 lakh in 2024 and Tk 25.6 lakh in 2025; this year he expects papaya, vegetables, fish and seedlings together to pass Tk 1 crore.
Suman sees the biggest opportunity in seedlings. He buys seed of the Indian Shahi and Kashmiri varieties for Tk 4.8 lakh a kilogram; one kilogram produces 21,000 seedlings. Aiming for two million seedlings this year, he has already raised 450,000 against orders and sells each for Tk 40, keeping a profit of Tk 2 a seedling. A seedling house roofed with UV-stabilised polythene keeps temperature and humidity under control.
Fifteen workers are employed on the farm, six of them women. One of them, Jasmine Akter, said the work has brought her family some security. At the Delowara Agricultural Training Centre, named after his wife, Suman trains farmers free of charge; he says about 2,000 people have trained there. Ismail Hossain, a young entrepreneur from Laksam in Cumilla, bought 200 seedlings and stayed a day to learn how to grow them.
Babuganj upazila agriculture officer Abdur Rouf called Suman a hard-working and innovative entrepreneur. Agriculturist Nahid Bin Rafiq of the Agriculture Information Service in Barishal said the disease-free, high-yielding seedlings adapt well even to Barishal's saline soils and yield well, which is why demand is growing across the country.
Reporting: M Jasim Uddin, Prothom Alo
Source: Prothom Alo
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