‘Bonus crop’ mustard offers hope for better days
Several hundred farmers, who rely on cultivation of only Boro rice once a year in haors of Netrakona's Khaliajuri upazila, are delighted to harvest a second crop this season.
After the Boro is harvested in May, the land in haors usually remains unused till December due to flooding. But this time, in a first in the upazila, the farmers sowed mustard there in November and reaped the harvest by the end of January. Now they have started planting Boro on the same land.
Advised by the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), more than 300 farmers cultivated the 'bonus crop' on about 450 hectares of land in the haors of the upazila, according to the DAE.
The farmers said mustard cultivation seems highly profitable. On top of earning around Tk 2,000 to 2,200 for each maund of mustard, they can earn more than the cost of its production only by selling the dead plants as firewood after harvest.
The cost of cultivating mustard on one acre of land is around Tk 5 thousand, whereas mustard plants ripped out after the harvest from the same land can be sold for around Tk 8 to 10 thousand, they also said.
Pallab Sarker, a farmer from Satgaon village, cultivated BARI-14 variety of mustard for the first time on one acre of land.
He said, "I'm expecting 15 maunds of mustard from here. I spent about Tk 5 thousand and hope to make about Tk 30 thousand from the sale of mustard."
"Profits like this in between Boro cultivations were beyond imagination for haor farmers once. But it's a reality now," said Rokon Mia, another farmer from the same area.
Habibur Rahman, upazila agriculture officer in Khaliajuri, said success in large-scale mustard cultivation has given hundreds of farmers hope for a brighter and better future.
The demand for mustard oil has been on the rise in recent years and the trend will likely continue. Hence, there is a good prospect if mustard is cultivated in large-scale on vast swathes of haor land that remain unutilised after Boro harvest every season.
Besides, the decomposing fallen leaves of the mustard plants work as bio-fertiliser, which help improve productivity of crops cultivated on the same land later on, he also said.
Khaliajuri Upazila Nirbahi Officer AHM Ariful Islam said to mark the birth centenary of Bangabandhu and the country's 50 years of independence, they are giving subsidy to 3,350 farmers for growing crops and vegetables this winter season on unutilised land in the upazila.
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