Farmers in Mirsharai upazila of Chattogram are hoping for a bumper sunflower harvest. According to the upazila agriculture office, sunflowers are much easier to grow than other crops and cost less to produce, which should encourage more farmers to take them up.

A visit to the area found that the local soil and weather suit sunflower cultivation, and that there is great potential for farmers to profit from the crop with little time and money. To encourage ordinary farmers, the agriculture department has supplied fertiliser and seed for 12 acres of land across the upazila's 16 unions.

Several farmers in Mehedinagar said sunflowers promise a better return than other crops. The flower yields oil, oilcake and fuel, and each kilogram of seed can produce at least half a litre of oil.

Each bigha of land produces 7-10 maunds of seed, or 140-200 litres of oil. Sunflower oil sells for at least Tk 250 a litre, while growing a bigha costs no more than Tk 3,500. With edible oil prices high in the market, demand for sunflower oil has risen.

Sunflower grower Naim Uddin said he took on a demonstration plot from the agriculture office and grew sunflowers on 33 decimals of land this year on a trial basis. He has spent about Tk 14,000 so far and hopes to sell the crop for Tk 25,000-30,000. If he had a modern machine, he said, he might have crushed the seed and used the oil himself or sold it.

Mirsharai upazila agriculture officer Pratap Chandra Roy said about 30 farmers grew sunflowers on 12 acres in the upazila this year. The area under the crop is growing day by day, he said, and the number will rise further from next year.

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