Dinajpur farmers share experiences of better yield with same cost

It was an unique occasion for around one hundred farmer couples as agro-chemical firm Syngenta Bangladesh Ltd organised a 'field day' at Chowmuhani village under Biral upazila of Dinajpur yesterday.

The event, aimed at facilitating farmers to share their experiences to get better yield of crops, began at around 11:00am.

Sharing his experiences, Abdul Hamid, a farmer of Chawmuhani village, said this year he cultivated BR-28 paddy on one acre of land following the Good Growth Plan introduced by Syngenta this year.

"Under the system, saplings are planted with eight inches gap with balanced and careful application of pesticides, fertilisers and irrigation. Following the method, I got 115 maunds of paddy from one acre of land while other farmers got only 67.5 maunds," he said.

Inaugurating the programme as chief guest, Julfiqar Haidar, additional director of the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE), urged the Syngenta officials to extend their work area to help farmers adopt adequate safety measures while using chemicals in their cropland.

Golam Mostafa, deputy director of Dinajpur DAE, and high officials of Syngenta were present at the programme. 

Farmers can greatly benefit by adopting the above mentioned method and it does not require additional spending, they said.

Golam Mostafa informed the farmers that Bangladesh Rice Research Institute released a new paddy variety named BR-63, which is able to produce one tonne per hectare.    

Farmers urged the company officials to organise such programmes again.