A two-day mango festival has begun in Sapahar, Naogaon. Deputy commissioner Abdul Awal opened it at around 11am on Friday (18 July) on the Sapahar Pilot High School ground. It was organised by the district administration with the help of the upazila administration.

Present at the opening were Abul Kalam Azad, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in the district, Sapahar upazila nirbahi officer (UNO) Selim Ahmed, Mahbubul Alam, principal of Sapahar Al Helal Islami Academy, Rafiqul Islam, upazila BNP president and mango farmer, young agri-entrepreneur Sohel Rana, district press club president Raihan Alam and others.

The festival has 40 stalls in all, featuring companies that supply mangoes to domestic and foreign markets, mango-based foods, processed products, farmer profiles and displays of different mango varieties.

Local mango farmers and traders see the festival opening new horizons for the mango trade. Most orchards in the district grow mangoes following good agricultural practices (GAP), but very little is exported compared with production. Farmers say they will not get the prices they want unless exports rise, and they demanded that the export process be made easier.

Sohel Rana, a mango farmer and owner of the local Barendra Agro Park, said export mangoes must be free of contamination or risk being sent back. That requires a vapour heat treatment (VHT) plant. A packing house for sorting mangoes and a quarantine branch of the agriculture department in Naogaon are needed so that quarantine certificates can be obtained easily. "We want to ask the administration and the government to provide these facilities."

Sapahar UNO Selim Ahmed said that although Sapahar leads the country in mango production, its farmers are still deprived. Most orchards here grow export-quality mangoes, and farmers have turned mango into an industry. Sapahar now has more than 20,000 mango farmers and more than 10,000 hectares under mango, and mangoes worth about Tk 5,000 crore were traded in the area last year. Sapahar's mangoes are very tasty and of good quality, and he asked exporters to pay special attention to the area.

Deputy commissioner Abdul Awal said Naogaon has taken mango farming to the level of an industry, and mangoes are now produced here all year round. "If you want to eat mangoes all year, you have to come to Sapahar." The challenge is the lack of exports: the demand of about two crore Bangladeshis living abroad cannot be met, and foreigners also want Bangladeshi mangoes. The barriers to export must be removed. He said a proposal to set up a VHT plant and packing house in Naogaon has been sent to the ministry concerned.

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