A sweet potato processing factory has been set up at Debiganj in Panchagarh district. It was set up by Muhammad Abdus Salam, president of the Bangladesh Organic Products Manufacturers Association, he said. The factory will produce and export sweet potato chips, powder and paste. Several buyers from Singapore, Korea and Japan have already visited the factory and inspected the soil of the area.

Once the factory is established, sweet potato food products worth about US$24 million, or about Tk 200 crore, will be exported every year. People in Panchagarh believe it will bring big changes to agriculture in the north of the country.

Muhammad Abdus Salam said sweet potato is a popular food not only in developed and rich countries but in many poor ones too. The country's daily carbohydrate needs could easily be met with sweet potato, which contains calcium, potassium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus and more.

It is the misfortune of the people of this country, he said, that the excellent, nutrient-rich sweet potato is looked down on as food for the poor and ignorant, when it is surely food for the rich and wise. That is why sweet potato is called a super food or miracle food around the world.

Rice, he said, is simply food, but certainly not safe, nutritious food. Everyone knows how much water, chemical fertiliser and life-destroying pesticide goes into growing paddy. Then there is all the processing to turn paddy into rice, the tricks of automatic rice mills to turn it into miniket, and still more "digital techniques" to turn miniket into premium miniket.

The Prime Minister repeatedly talks about safe, nutritious food, he said. On the country's roughly 6 lakh hectares of char land and sandy loam soil, about 1.5 crore tonnes of sweet potato could easily be grown, meeting the nutritional needs of the whole nation. The crop needs little water and only organic fertiliser.

He said the country's leaders, bureaucrats and officials spend lakhs of taka every year travelling to Europe, America and other countries to attend food habit diversification programmes. He did not know what information or guidance those who travelled on such programmes, at the cost of public money and valuable time, had given the nation on their return, but they probably had not managed to change the food habits even of their own families.

A few years ago Abdus Salam brought two sweet potato varieties from Japan, the purple Murasaki and the orange Okinawa, and began growing them in Panchagarh district with the help of Md Mokhlesur Rahman, director of the Tuber Crops Development Project. Last year the two varieties were grown on about 20 acres, and the agriculture minister visited the fields and expressed great satisfaction.

With the help of the same project director, cultivation of the two varieties has begun this year on about 200 acres in different districts.

These two varieties are rich in anthocyanin, antioxidants and beta-carotene, which help prevent many diseases including cancer. Their glycaemic index is only 46, so diabetic patients can eat their fill without fear. Their high fibre content will help control diabetes and relieve constipation. Among the many benefits, eating the purple Murasaki and orange Okinawa sweet potatoes keeps you full for a long time, which helps control weight.

Their anti-inflammatory content, such as vitamins A, B, C, D, E and K, helps prevent many illnesses and keeps the body healthy. Rich in antioxidants, they contain carotenoids, which prevent cell damage in the human body. The vitamins E and C in the two varieties keep skin and hair healthy, and the anthocyanin they contain kills any cancer cells while keeping other cells healthy.

Source: Amader Shomoy. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.