Sahida Begum, 44, of Gobindapur village in Faridpur municipality, is not just a successful farmer but one of the country's best. She is known across Bangladesh for producing improved onion seed. She was named an Agriculturally Important Person (AIP) in 2021 in the Ministry of Agriculture's category for agricultural production or commercial farms and agro-processing, was selected among the Anannya Top Ten in 2020, and the same year received the Standard Chartered–Channel i Agro Award as the country's best farmer.

She also tops the list of onion seed producers of the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC) in Faridpur. This year she sold at least Tk 4 crore of onion seed, earning about Tk 3 crore after costs.

Educated to class nine, Sahida married in 1987 into a farming family and learned household and farm work from her mother-in-law, Zohra Begum. The family grew rice, jute, wheat and chickpea. Around 2004, she became interested after seeing a neighbour grow onion seed. In the first year she grew it on 20 decimals, harvested two maunds and earned Tk 80,000. She kept expanding, and this year grew onion seed on 30 acres, harvesting 200 maunds at Tk 2 lakh a maund, worth at least Tk 4 crore. Her husband, Md. Baktar Hossain Khan, a state-owned bank officer, says she now farms about 100 acres after starting with two bighas.

She employs 50 to 60 workers for six months of the year and at least 20 year-round. She packages her seed under the brand "Khan Seed", which buyers come for from Thakurgaon, Rangpur, Jhenaidah, Satkhira, Pabna, Rajbari, Madaripur, Gopalganj, Naogaon and Sirajganj. This year she introduced a new onion variety called "Nakshi Kantha" from Khan Seed.

When bee habitats declined and seed pollination failed, cutting yields, she was the first to start hand-pollinating onion seed, and succeeded. Growing onion seed is harder than most crops and depends heavily on weather, she said; this year's good weather gave two to two and a half maunds a bigha, at a cost of more than Tk 1 lakh a bigha. Her success has inspired others, including Abir Hossain, a postgraduate who stopped job-hunting and produced 20 maunds of onion seed this year.

S. M. Ikramul Haque, joint director (seed processing centre) of BADC Faridpur, called her one of the country's best onion seed producers, working in the north as well as Faridpur, and said the government will procure at least two tonnes of seed from her this year. Md. Shahaduzzaman, deputy director of DAE Faridpur, said about 10 tonnes of onion seed worth around Tk 400 crore will be produced this year. Once almost entirely imported, onion seed, known as "black gold", is now 50 percent supplied by Faridpur farmers, with Sahida the best among them.

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