Nilphamari farmers sell cattle for fodder price hike
Farmers in the district are selling their cattle at low prices as they cannot afford to buy fodder due to its high price.
Aliar Rahman, 65, a farmer of Panchapukur village in Sadar upazila, rears cattle in his homestead for additional income.
This year's devastating flood damaged his pile of straw and he cannot buy fodder at higher price from market as flood ruined his crops.
He said, “A maund of straw costs Tk 600 to Tk 700 in the market now, while it was only Tk 120 to Tk 150 before the flood.”
He took his milk bearing cow to Nilphamari cattle market to sell, but buyers wanted to pay only Tk 35,000, while the price was around Tk 50,000 before the flood.
District Livestock Officer (DLO) Dr Shahinur Alam said flood badly affected around 20,000 cattle and one lakh chickens, adding that farmers were compelled to take shelter with their domestic animals and birds, keeping them unfed.
They returned home when floodwater started receding from the last week of August, and found that their piles of straw had become rotten, and even the grass in the grazing fields had died and become inedible.
“Flood damaged my Aman field, and I can't re-transplant paddy saplings in the affected field for want of money. I cannot buy cattle fodder in this situation,” cattle farmer Manik Hossain, 50, of Kisamot Satnai village in Dimla upazila said.
“So I sold my two cows a week ago for only Tk 1.23 lakh, which could have fetched at least Tk 1.60 lakh after harvesting of Aman paddy starting in the Bangle month of Agrahayan,” he added.
This correspondent visited Dhelapir hat in Saidpur upazila and saw straw wholesalers with heaps of straw waiting for buyers, but farmers did not buy the straw as the prices were beyond their reach.
Cattle farmer Abed Ali, 45, of Kashiram village in Saidpur upazila, said his cows and goats are losing weight for want of fodder. He came to Dhelapir hat for buying straw, but wholesalers asked for Tk 700 per maund, which is beyond his capacity, Abed said.
A cow can consume four maunds of straw in a month, costing Tk 2,800, which is impossible for him to afford, he added.
Samad Ali, a straw wholesaler in Nilphamari bazar, said the reason for the high prices is that they had to purchase straw from other districts at high price, and had to pay transportation cost also.
DLO Shahinur said, “This year's flood ruined 488 tonnes of straw, 371 tonnes of grass and 16 tonnes of concentrated food, creating an acute scarcity of fodder. We have distributed cutting of hi-breed napier grass collected from seven acres of land.”