FruitsBotany graduate Abu Raihan Faruk began with a single orange tree in his yard and now runs an integrated orange, grape, mango and areca farm with a nursery at Belgachha in Kurigram Sadar; last year he sold about Tk 32 lakh of fruit and saplings.
AgribusinessKash grass that grows by itself on the sandbars of the Brahmaputra and Dharla needs no seed, fertiliser or irrigation and sells to betel growers; one farmer earned about Tk 265,000 from an acre last year.
LivestockThree char unions of Chilmari in Kurigram keep about 29,000 cattle and buffaloes but have no permanent livestock doctor, so sick animals often die on the boat to the upazila town.
BangladeshBangladesh's second agro-ecological zone is a narrow, restless belt along the Teesta, Dharla and Dudhkumar rivers. Here the river builds new land and takes old land away, and farmers grow maize, potatoes, chillies and carrots on chars that may vanish in the next flood. Understanding it takes village-level records, and satellite images and machine learning can help only when they are checked in farmers' fields.
After protests, warehouse looting and an assault on an extension officer during aman, the DAE will update the 2014 list of the district's 584,000 farmers and issue temporary cards carrying photo, NID and landholding; deputy director Abdullah Al Mamun says NID-only distribution let non-farmers take f
At Ghogadaha in Kurigram Sadar, 120 sacks of urea were due for distribution but the dealer never opened; farmers assaulted sub-assistant agriculture officer Mamun Or Rashid, who fled to a trader's house. The dealer faces a show-cause notice.
Hundreds queued at dealer points in Kurigram Sadar on Sunday and briefly blocked roads over short allocations and alleged irregularities; the DAE says the district holds about 1,000 tonnes of urea above demand.
Farmers in Ulipur, Kurigram, surrounded a sub-assistant agriculture officer at Gabtali bazar on Friday evening, alleging that dealers are not selling urea at the government price while retailers charge up to Tk 50 a kilogram; police freed him after about half an hour.
Farmers who arrived at a dealer's point in Nageshwari's Gabtala Bazar to find the fertiliser gone blocked the Madarganj-Kachakata road with tree trunks on Friday morning and confined a sub-assistant agriculture officer in the warehouse for about four hours.
Growers from Kurigram to Jashore say they cannot buy fertiliser at any price, while the agriculture ministry reports stocks higher than last year.
After attempts to stir disorder at distribution points in Roumari and Bhurungamari, Kurigram's agriculture department says allocations are at record levels, 5,875 tonnes of urea in August against 3,253 last year, plus 1,572 tonnes of DAP, 1,648 of MOP and 924 of TSP, that Aman top-dressing is near
Despite a good harvest, supply at the Jatrapur market has fallen and traders say middlemen are buying jute at a premium and moving it to India by river.
Distribution of 30 tonnes of GR rice allocated for flood and river-erosion victims in Nageshwari, Kurigram, has finally begun, weeks after the floods receded.
