Rajbari Farmers Seek Tk 2,000 a Maund as Murikata Onion Planting Continues

Farmers in Rajbari district were busy planting and tending murikata onion in late October 2025, Jago News reported on 30 October, and they said the crop would have to sell for at least Tk 2,000 a maund in the season to make farming it worthwhile. The onion, grown from small bulbs rather than seedlings, was expected to reach the market in about two to three months. About half of the target area had been planted by then, and the district agriculture office expected planting to end within a week.

According to the report, preparing the land, buying bulb seed (guti), fertiliser, pesticide and labour were costing farmers about Tk 50,000 to 60,000 a bigha that year. Those working their own land spent about Tk 20,000 to 25,000 less, because leasing one bigha cost a farmer about Tk 15,000 to 25,000.

Farmers said bulb seed was somewhat cheaper than before, but that the cost of leasing and preparing land, fertiliser, pesticide, irrigation and labour had risen and pushed up their expenses. They were planting all the same in the hope of a profit. To keep farmers going at those input prices, they said, the market price would have to be set at a minimum of Tk 2,000 a maund in the season. Barring a disaster, they hoped for 50 to 60 maunds a bigha.

Both units are local ones. The Daily Star has described the maund of the onion trade as roughly 37 kilograms, while Jago News, in a 2024 report from Pabna, used 40 kilograms. A study from Bangladesh Agricultural University published in 2025 takes the bigha as 33 decimals. The farmers' figure was a demand, not a price anyone had agreed: the report names no body that had set, or had promised to set, a minimum price for the crop.

Planting began in fields across the district in the second week of October 2025, and about half of the target area had been planted by the time of the report. The largest areas were in Goalanda, Kalukhali and Baliakandi upazilas, with smaller ones in Rajbari Sadar and Pangsha. Hali onion, the main seedling-grown crop, was to be planted from the end of December or from January, just before the murikata crop came out of the ground.

According to the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in Rajbari, the district's onion target for the season was more than about 36,000 hectares, of which 5,870 hectares was for murikata. The DAE gave this breakdown of the murikata area:

• Goalanda: 2,230 hectares
• Kalukhali: 1,665 hectares
• Baliakandi: 1,200 hectares
• Pangsha: 425 hectares
• Rajbari Sadar: 355 hectares

The production target was given as about 95,000 tonnes. The report states the figure directly after the murikata area and does not say whether it covers that crop alone. For comparison, the district's target for its whole onion crop was reported as 4.8 lakh tonnes in January 2024, and DAE officials in Pabna set about 1.18 lakh tonnes for that district's murikata crop in October 2023.

Onion, Allium cepa, is a bulbous herb whose edible bulb is made up of food-storage leaves, as Banglapedia describes it, and it can be raised either from seed or from small starter bulbs. Murikata is the Bangladeshi name for the second route: the bulbs themselves are put into the field. In Pabna the same crop is known as mulkata, The Daily Star reported in December 2022.

Farmers keep back part of their bulbs for this purpose, a Daily Observer article explained in October 2020. It estimated that 10 to 12 percent of the country's onion land was planted this way. Murikata planting runs through October and can go on into November, according to reports from Pabna. The DAE there told reporters in 2024 that the crop took at most 80 days from planting to market, and it usually began to come in at the end of December or the start of January.

That early arrival is the point of the crop. It comes to market before the main seedling crop, which is lifted around March, and so it is valued as a supply for the lean weeks. The Daily Star wrote in October 2023 that although it is grown on a small area, the fresh onion keeps supply normal and helps bring the market under control. Farmers paid for this advantage: the same paper noted in December 2024 that the crop costs somewhat more to grow but fetches a better price because it is early.

Its weakness is that it does not keep. Desh Rupantor reported in November 2024 that it could not be stored, and writer Gawhar Naeem Wahra made the same point in a Prothom Alo column in January 2025: whatever the price, the crop has to be sold. Profit from murikata is also what many farmers use to plant the next crop, so a poor price carries over into the following round. The column named Rajbari, Kushtia and Pabna as the districts where the crop is widely grown.

Rajbari farmers grow two kinds of crop one after the other, the Jago News report explained: murikata at the start of winter, held for only a short time, and then hali onion, which can be stored for almost the whole year. Murikata made up one-sixth of the district's main onion cultivation. It was grown to some extent in all five upazilas, but most of it in Goalanda, Kalukhali and Baliakandi.

Farmer Halim Sheikh told Jago News: "This time I am growing murikata onion on 6 bighas. Fertiliser, pesticide, fuel, labour, everything is more expensive. It is costing me about Tk 3 lakh. If fertiliser were cheaper and I got Tk 2,000 a maund after harvest, I would make some profit. Below Tk 2,000 a maund we will make a loss."

Another farmer, Isa, said: "We feel helpless planting onion and garlic now. I bought onion bulb seed at Tk 2,500-2,600 a maund. At selling time we have to sell at Tk 1,500-2,000. With everything we have to buy at such prices, if the yield is not good we will be finished. I cannot tell what the yield will be this time. I hope it will be good. With a good yield it will be 50-60 maunds a bigha; with a bad one no more than 30-35 maunds. If prices are low then, our situation will be very bad."

Kader Molla and Hashem Ali Sheikh said: "Onion farming is costing a lot this time. Land, fertiliser, fuel, ploughing, everything is more expensive. But when we go to sell, we do not get the price. This time it is costing about Tk 50,000 to 60,000 a bigha in all."

Golam Rasul, training officer at the DAE in Rajbari, told Jago News that murikata planting was under way and would be finished within a week. "If the weather stays favourable, we hope the district will produce about 95,000 tonnes of onion this year," he said.

He answered the farmers' worries about fertiliser directly. "The district has adequate fertiliser stocks. Monitoring at field level has been stepped up. Next month's fertiliser allocation will be larger, so there will be no problem with fertiliser. Wherever we get a complaint, action is taken after investigation," he said. The report carries no comment from an official on the Tk 2,000 demand.

Weather had been a real risk only a year earlier. In 2024, heavy rain in September and October held up planting in Pabna by two to three weeks, and seed rotted in the ground in many fields, Desh Rupantor reported. As late as 28 November that year Jago News found the Pabna target of 8,580 hectares unmet, with 7,456 hectares planted.

Rajbari is a leading onion district. Jago News put its share at about 16 percent of the country's onions and ranked it the third-largest producing district, with its crop meeting a large part of national demand. The Daily Star, reporting in January 2024, called Pabna, Rajbari and Faridpur the country's biggest onion districts, together accounting for more than half of annual production.

The district lies in Dhaka division and covers 1,092.28 square kilometres, most of it the alluvial soil of the Padma, according to Banglapedia, which lists the Padma, Gorai, Chandana and Chitra as its main rivers. The 2011 census counted 1,049,778 people there, and Banglapedia gives agriculture as the main source of income for 60.84 percent of them. Rajbari became a district in 1984. Goalanda had been a subdivision since 1871; it was upgraded to a district in March 1984 and renamed Rajbari. Kalukhali, now one of the three leading murikata upazilas, is the youngest of the five: it was formed on 24 September 2006 from part of Pangsha.

Earlier reports show how the area has grown. The Daily Star wrote in December 2018 that the district had 28,250 hectares under onion, against 28,225 hectares the year before, with a production target of 2.81 lakh tonnes. In March 2019 Jago News, in a report on rainwater rotting onion in the fields, cited the district DAE as saying 28,295 hectares had been planted against a target of 27,120 hectares. By January 2024 the target was 36,000 hectares, and the DAE's deputy director in Rajbari said the area could reach 40,000 hectares and 5 lakh tonnes, while warning that the result would depend on the weather through the whole cycle and that a sufficient winter spell was needed.

Rajbari's demand followed several seasons in which growers had named the price they needed and had often failed to get it. In December 2018 a Kalukhali farmer told The Daily Star he had sold at about Tk 750 a maund and would have made some profit at Tk 1,000. Another farmer, from Pangsha, said Indian onion had glutted the local wholesale markets, and the district DAE's deputy director said the department had given growers all its support but could do nothing about market prices.

Costs then climbed. Growers in Pabna told Ittefaq in November 2020 that murikata cost Tk 50,000 to 80,000 a bigha including land held on a one-year lease, and that a good yield was 45 to 55 maunds. Farmers there said at that time, when prices were high, that they would need Tk 2,500 to 3,000 a maund to make a little profit. In December 2022 the same district's growers reported a cost of about Tk 40,000 a bigha and said about 25 percent of the crop spoiled, while it was selling for only Tk 800 to 850 a maund, down from Tk 1,200 to 1,500 a year earlier.

In January 2024 a farmer in Sujanagar upazila of Pabna told The Daily Star that growers got up to 60 maunds a bigha and needed Tk 1,800 to 2,000 a maund for a sufficient profit. Another said labour had gone up to about Tk 700 a day from Tk 500, and that leasing added roughly Tk 15,000 a bigha.

The 2024-25 season was a hard one for Pabna's growers. Pabna growers reported paying Tk 8,000 to 9,000 a maund for bulbs that had cost Tk 5,000 to 6,000 the year before, and more for DAP fertiliser. When the crop came in, however, prices fell. The Daily Star found no market among at least four Pabna hats paying more than Tk 1,400 a maund in late December 2024, and farmers threw onions on the Pabna-Sujanagar road in protest, demanding an end to imports and a fair price. Traders blamed the drop on larger supplies of new onion and on cheap imports. By January 2025 Pabna farmers were claiming a production cost of more than Tk 2,000 a maund against a market of Tk 1,000 to 1,500, Desh Rupantor reported, with average yields of 35 to 40 maunds a bigha instead of the 60 to 70 they had hoped for. In Rajbari that month, the Prothom Alo column said, a farmer was getting Tk 1,300 to 1,400 at the wholesale depot and had to give four extra kilograms on each maund.

Set against that, the Tk 2,500 to 2,600 that the farmer Isa said he paid for bulb seed in October 2025 helps show why Rajbari's growers called seed cheaper. The prices come from different districts and seasons, however, and the Rajbari report gives no figure for the year before.

Prices of the crop have long depended on what comes across the border. A Daily Observer article in October 2020 said that average production over the previous ten years was about 15.53 lakh tonnes, against average imports of about 8.45 lakh tonnes, and that about 90 percent of imported onions came from India. It said the crop harvested from December to May had to last until the following November, and that domestic output had not managed this.

Domestic output has since grown. DAE figures cited in the Bangladesh Agricultural University study put production at 3.6 million tonnes in 2021-22 and 3.4 million tonnes in 2022-23, and the same paper cites FAOSTAT for consumption of 15.6 kilograms a person in 2021. In March 2025 The Daily Star reported, from DAE data, that the onion area had expanded by 10 percent to 2.93 lakh hectares in FY25, and that the larger crop was pushing prices down at the peak of the harvest.

The months before the Rajbari report were unsettled. On 9 August 2025 Jago News reported that onion prices had risen by up to Tk 15 a kilogram in a week, with local onions at Tk 70 to 75 a kilogram wholesale at Karwan Bazar in Dhaka and up to Tk 80 at retail, amid bad weather, reduced supply from the main districts and a long suspension of imports from India. Imports then resumed: New Age reported later that month that about 2,280 tonnes had entered through the Satkhira land port since 10 August with little effect, as onions were retailing at Tk 80 to 85 a kilogram in Dhaka on 21 August. The Rajbari report itself gives no market price for late October.

A study by Bangladesh Agricultural University researchers, published in the Archives of Agriculture and Environmental Science in 2025, gives a wider view of the crop's economics. It surveyed 120 onion farmers in Bera and Santhia upazilas of Pabna, half of them with agricultural credit and half without. It found a total cost of about Tk 3.84 lakh a hectare for the credit group and about Tk 3.78 lakh for the others, with a benefit-cost ratio of 2.53 and 2.37. The authors concluded that onion farming was profitable for both groups, and that it created jobs because it needs so much labour.

The study deals with onion farming in general in two Pabna upazilas, not with murikata or with Rajbari, so its figures cannot test the Tk 2,000 demand.

Photo: RockyMasum / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). The top picture shows an onion field elsewhere in Bangladesh in November 2018, as background.

Sources: Jagonews24, The Daily Star, Desh Rupantor, Prothom Alo, Ittefaq, Dhaka Times, The Daily Observer, New Age, Banglapedia, Archives of Agriculture and Environmental Science (Bangladesh Agricultural University study, 2025).