Farmers across northern Bangladesh are hoping for a turnaround this Aman season, with favourable weather and adequate rainfall carrying transplanting to its final stretch. According to the Department of Agricultural Extension's Rangpur office, the division's eight districts have a target of 663,714 hectares of transplanted Aman and a production target of 2,633,000 tonnes of paddy.

In other years a late monsoon leaves growers anxious about getting seedlings into the ground; this season the rain came on time. Most fields are already planted and the remainder should be done within 10 to 15 days, the department said. Across the fields, tractors and power tillers are preparing land while farm families repair bunds, level plots, pull seedlings from nurseries and broadcast fertiliser.

Abdul Bari, a farmer in Rangpur Sadar, has planted five bighas and says the rain spared him irrigation costs altogether, leaving his outlay lower than before and his hopes high for a good yield. Nasir Uddin of Ranipukur in Mithapukur, who got a fair price for his last Boro crop, is planting five bighas of Aman on the same expectation.

But Nazrul Islam, a sharecropper in the Teesta area who has planted two bighas, fears paddy will again sell below the cost of growing it. Hard labour and expenses leave little profit in rice and more often a loss, he said; he has farmed for about 50 years only because there is no other work in the area.

Md Sirajul Islam, additional director of the department in Rangpur, said northern farmers are keen on transplanted Aman and that, weather permitting, the area planted should exceed the target; agriculture officers are on hand to advise and support marginal farmers.

Based on BSS's Rangpur report. Source: BSS