Growing vegetables of many kinds and flavours has brought a quiet revolution to more than 50 villages in several unions of Thakurgaon Sadar upazila, including Gareya, Rajagaon, Nargun and Begunbari. These villages produce Tk 900 crore of vegetables a year.

Most families in the villages are now involved in growing vegetables. It has improved the lot of very poor villagers and ended unemployment for many young men. After meeting the district's needs, the villages' vegetables go to different parts of the country.

Asaduzzaman Asad, sub-assistant agriculture officer for Gareya union, said the union's villages of Bagerhat, Chandipur, Nilarhat, Gunjargarh and Chakhaldi produce 1,500 tonnes of vegetables a year. After meeting the district's demand, their vegetables go to markets in the capital and elsewhere. About Tk 100 crore of vegetables are sold from here each year, he said.

In the villages, sweet gourd, ash gourd, aubergine, okra, cabbage, bitter gourd, pointed gourd and other vegetables are being grown, and traders hurry there every morning. Gias Uddin, a farmer of Chakhaldi village, said that until a few years ago he grew rice on three bigha. Now he grows vegetables on all of it in the rabi season.

Siraj Ali said vegetables pay better than rice. Various seasonal vegetables can be grown over a year, and he can make a profit of about Tk 35,000 to Tk 40,000 a bigha. Sadekul Alam, a marginal farmer of neighbouring Rajagaon village, once grew only boro and aman rice. For some years he has cut back on other crops and turned to vegetables. He said the yield was good this time, but although prices were somewhat higher at first, they have now fallen.

Kader Mia, a local trader at the nearby Bagerhat wholesale market, said vegetables are traded wholesale every day at the Bagerhat, Chandipur Mor and Gareya markets in the union. From the afternoon, vegetables are loaded onto lorries, which take them overnight straight to wholesale markets in Dhaka.

According to the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), vegetables were grown on 3,180 hectares in the district this year.

Sirajul Islam, deputy director of the DAE in Thakurgaon, told Jago News that Gareya and Nargun unions are the agriculturally rich areas of the Sadar upazila. Farmers have been happy with good vegetable prices for several years. About Tk 900 crore of vegetables are sold from here each year, he said, and this has made farmers keen on vegetables. The agriculture department plans to make the vegetable villages role models and ideal farming villages in future.

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