Lemon farmers enjoys profit

"> The luscious big lemons of Raghunathpur. PHOTO: STAR 

I visited Raghunathpur back in 2004 and was introduced to a Lemon farmer named Ibrahim Sarkar. An ambitious elderly man, he pioneered profitable lemon farming in this region and thus opened the door for a lot of local farmers to be self-sufficient.He passed away a few years back but his endeavors didn't stop. We visited Raghumathpur again recently to find out the consequences of the quest that Ibrahim Sarkar had once started.
I met Mainuddin, a thriving lemon farmer and spoke to him. He has a fourteen katha (measurement of land) worth lemon orchard that contains about 1,500 trees. I visited his orchard. The lemon are healthy and luscious and it is Mainuddin's key profitable crop. He added that he is highly regarded as a  people of the area because of his success as a lemon farmer. He purchased new lands, got his four daughters married and runs his household smoothly.
The locals are getting more inclined to producing lemon alongside vegetables and fish farming than paddy and other key crops because lemon farming according is more profitable. He pointed out some drawbacks the attack of a certain disease or bacteria to be precise, because of which the lemon loses its natural colour and the farmers subsequently do not get fair price. When asked about the local Agricultural Department's intervention, he said that they have been reluctant about providing them (farmers) proper solutions .
It's amazing how a farming method expands through a handful of people, starting with Ibrahim Sarkar and Mainuddin and reaching other farmers. Chan Miah is one of them. After retiring from his job, he felt like contribution rather than passing time with trifle activities and hence got involved in producing lemon. The size of his orchard is twelve Katha. His yearly income from the orchard has now peaked to Tk. 1 to 1.5 lakh although according to him, he has earned Tk. 2 lakh in his first year of farming because the demand for lemon was greater back then. But he still manages to earn around Tk. 3 to Tk. 3.5 lakh every year as he produces more lemons than ever.
Like Mainuddin, Chan Miah too, described the attack of certain bacteria and insects as the key issues in producing lemons. To prevent this, they require timely and proper irrigation and pesticides. They usually use machines for irrigation but these machines becomes unavailable during the IRRI seasons as the rice fields all around requires irrigation at that time, and they get deprived.
Profitable Lemon farming has become a booming field through the whole region and it's benefitting the farmers more than ever before. I meet with retired Army Sergeant Harun Ur Rashid who took up farming as a profession. He started off with a Lemon orchard and earned quite well from it in eight years time.
Starting with key cash crops like rice and jute on the lands he owns, he, however, finally landed on lemon farming as it is more profitable than the aforementioned crops. He added that the cost of producing a maund of rice is Tk. 800 to Tk. 850 taka and they sell for 500 taka. So, there was an obvious loss of Tk. three hundred per maund. This is why he and fellow farmers shifted to Lemon farming. He's been producing lemons for the last four years on his five katha worth orchard. He started off with around Tk. five to seven thousand included planting and main-

Shykh Seraj is an Agriculture Development and Media Activist. He is an Ashoka Fellow and an FAO A.H. Boerma Awardee. At Channel i, he is Director and Head of News. He is also Director, Planner and Presenter of the popular Agro-Documentary “Hridoye Mati O Manush”.