GalleryBetween the Chelopara rail bridge and the Shah Fateh Ali bridge on the Karatoya, a small playing field turns into a banana market every morning, with Anupam, Champa, Sagar and Shabri bananas brought in from the villages and sold by 9am.
VegetablesAfter a good crop and price last season, farmers in Sonatala, Bogura, are again planting chilli on 910 hectares; hybrids yield 80-85 maunds a bigha, the hotter local Bogura chilli 40-45.
OpinionWriting in Prothom Alo, Dr Md Shariful Islam of the SAARC Agriculture Centre says protecting what is left of the Karatoya pool at Sherpur and restoring its river links must come first, with surveys before any fingerlings are released.
Container cold stores costing about Tk 15 lakh each, paid for by the Climate Change Trust Fund, hold no vegetables; operators say they were never trained to run them.
GalleryBuyers crowd the early market at Pollimongol on the edge of Bogura town for native fish the sellers say come from Chalan Beel; a photo story by Prothom Alo's Soyel Rana.
GalleryWood apples brought from Naogaon, Natore and Satkhira sell wholesale for Tk 5 to Tk 25 apiece at Bogura's Rail Crossing No 3 market, in a photo story by Prothom Alo's Soel Rana.
HealthAbout 283,800 people die of heart disease and related causes in Bangladesh every year, says Dr Md Matiur Rahman, head of TMSS's health sector, and regular checks of blood pressure, sugar, weight and cholesterol are the key to prevention.
LivestockFazlur Rahman of Darugram, Kusumbi, keeps ducks on one side of a 24-decimal pond and fish on the other, and grazes the flock on harvested rice fields to save on feed.
GalleryVillages across Shibganj and Mokamtala in Bogura are full of banana orchards; photographer Soel Rana follows the ripe bunches from the trees to vans, wholesale depots and trucks bound for markets around the country, in a Prothom Alo photo story.
Bogura farmers sell pointed gourd and cucumber at Tk 30 a kilo while the same vegetables fetch Tk 50-60 ten kilometres away, and the diesel-driven rise in freight adds well under a taka a kilo.
In Nuruil village in Bogura Sadar, hundreds of red, blue and yellow dragonflies have spread their wings on dried chilli plants and vegetable shoots.
At Mokamtala in Bogura's Shibganj, young agriculture graduates raise disease-free seedlings in soilless cocopeat trays and grow chemical-free vegetables under polyshade with mulch film, fogging and drip irrigation, and offer hydroponics services.
At the Asian Tourism Fair, Sukher Khamar Agro Limited showed plans for a 100-room resort beside a 400-cattle farm, fish ponds and a 1 MW solar plant in Kahalu, Bogura, with more than a thousand partners from 21 countries.
