An advisory meeting on increasing, expanding and marketing crab farming was held in Satkhira. It was organised by the Nawabenki Ganomukhi Foundation at 11am on Sunday at the Ellarchar fisheries training centre in the town.

The meeting was chaired by Md Mahabubur Alam, coordinator of the non-government organisation Nawabenki Ganomukhi Foundation. District fisheries officer Md Moshiur Rahman was the chief guest, and district environment officer Sardar Shariful Islam and forest officer Md Nazmul Huda were special guests.

Moderated by the foundation's coordinator (agriculture) Abdul Hamid, the meeting heard a presentation on the project by Saiful Hasan, value chain facilitator of the crab farming project.

Present were Shyamnagar upazila senior fisheries officer Faruk Hussain Sagar, Assasuni fisheries officer Selim Sultan, Tala officer Nirmal Kumar Ghosh, Debhata officer Badruzzaman, NGF admin Humaira Lutfi and crab hatchery project manager Masudul Haque, along with crab farmers and traders from the seven upazilas.

Farmers Manik Chandra Bachhar, Raju Sarkar, Mohabbat Hossain, Abul Kalam, Asim Kumar Baidya, Nepal Chandra Mondal and Shahin Alam spoke about the problems of crab farming and offered suggestions.

The meeting was told that the district's seven upazilas have 11,720 crab farmers. The Ganomukhi Foundation is working to raise entrepreneurs' incomes and create jobs by spreading crab farming technology and marketing.

District fisheries officer Md Moshiur Rahman said crab is a promising sector in Satkhira from which a great deal can be earned. For that, farmers must be motivated and the profitable side of crab farming publicised more widely, he said. He listened to the farmers and assured them the problems would be addressed.

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