Cold, high irrigation cost dampen boro hopes
Persisting cold and fog coupled with increased irrigation cost have dampened hopes for a boro bumper this year.
Though the biting cold wave waned significantly in the central districts including the capital over the past week, the mercury continues to be around 5 to 7 degrees Celsius in the rice-rich northern region. This is causing serious damage to boro seedbeds and young plants.
Official sources and our correspondents confirmed that persisting cold resulted in growth of frail and yellowish plants in some areas under boro cultivation.
The Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) has launched campaigns advising growers to save their seedbeds from the crunch of prolonged cold wave.
Moreover, increased irrigation costs would cause the per unit rice production cost to accelerate, field reports suggest.
Reports from various northern districts suggest that for irrigating every bigha of boro land farmers are now being charged between Tk. 1800 to Tk. 2000 as opposed to Tk. 1200 last season.
Following the recent rise in diesel price, irrigation services providers have been charging much higher prices. Moreover, the tariff hike in power has also posed as a problem. There are about one lakh electricity-fired irrigation pumps across the country
The drawbacks came when farmers were hoping to recoup the loss they incurred in bad aman harvest. Price disparity between diesel and kerosene is a concern to the irrigation-service providers. They fear that diesel may be adulterated by mixing with relative low-priced kerosene and used to operate irrigation pumps, thereby damaging machinery.
A buoyant rice price in the market at this time of the year had encouraged farmers to bring around four million hectares of cropland under boro coverage.
According to Dr Mahabub Hossain, head of social science division of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Bangladeshi farmers have to spend about 51 dollars in irrigating one hectare land whereas the irrigation expenditures are about 32 dollars in Punjab, India and 18 dollars and 26 dollars respectively in Thailand and Vietnam.
Dr Mahabub recommended rapid expansion of rural electrification to provide power at subsidised rates to rural farmers.
The boro growers usually need to keep their land under constant irrigation till harvesting. They have to depend on either diesel-run or electricity-driven irrigation machines, as the boro lands require to be kept under certain level of water for at least 75 days.
In the last boro season, different types of irrigation pumps helped farmers irrigate over 32 lakh hectares of boro land, over two lakh hectares of wheat land and nearly three lakh hectares of lands used for cultivating other seasonal crops.
Privatisation and rapid expansion of irrigation pumps across Bangladesh over the last half a decade has helped the country attain food autarky in the year 1999-2000 fiscal.
As per government-set food grain production target for 2002-03, the two main irrigated cereals, boro and wheat, constitute more than half of Bangladesh's food output. Government has set food grain production target at 280 lakh 77 thousand MT for the current fiscal (2002-03). The break-up of the total targeted output is aus 18.40 lakh MT, aman 114.58 lakh MT, boro 130.29 lakh MT and wheat 17.50 lakh MT.
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