Eight years ago Mohammad Touhidul Islam, 35, drove an auto-rickshaw in Osmanpur union of Mirsarai, Chattogram. With an uncle's help he began farming fish on one and a half acres; today his farm covers 300 acres and earns him at least Tk 3 crore a year after costs. More than a hundred people in the union have become crorepatis the same way.
The union of about 20,000 people once lived on livestock, rice and fishing in canals and beels. After the Muhuri project was completed in 1986, wide new chars rose on its eastern side; in the 1990s Abul Khayer, Md Mostafa, Mohammad Moni and Khokon started commercial fish farms there. About 7,000 people in the union now work in fish farming.
By the upazila fisheries office's and farmers' count, fish farms cover some 15,000 acres in West Banshkhali, the Muhuri project area and Patakot. Short of land, Osmanpur's farmers have spread to Chairman Ghat and Subarnachar in Noakhali, Sonagazi and Chhagalnaiya in Feni, and the chars of Banshkhali, Halishahar, Sitakunda, Banshbaria and Ichhakhali in Chattogram, about 40,000 acres in all.
Mirsarai senior upazila fisheries officer Arifur Rahman said high-density farming and good-quality feed let farmers here produce 10 to 12 tonnes of tilapia and carp per acre, about 180,000 tonnes a year in the Muhuri project area alone. From dawn, hundreds of vehicles carry fry and feed; between 9 and 10 at night, trucks of live fish leave for wholesale markets in the cities.
Mohammad Yunus Mia, 36, left a private-sector job ten years ago to start with seven acres; his farm is now about 200 acres with an annual turnover of Tk 8 to 10 crore. Everyone here with 20 to 30 acres is a crorepati, he said, but good feed is hard to find, and feed prices are rising faster than fish prices.
Former migrant worker Fariful Islam now owns 400 acres and distributes a large company's fish feed. He wants feed prices kept steady and fair prices for the fish. Touhidul Islam said farm workers, drivers and feed and medicine shops have given work to thousands, and he asked the government for security and credit support for fish farmers.
Reported by Iqbal Hossain for Prothom Alo.
Photo: A carp and tilapia pond (illustrative, Philippines), Jason Houston for USAID / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Source: Prothom Alo
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