KHULNA, June 22, 2020 (BSS) – The farmers produced 13,416 tonnes of onion in Khulna agriculture zone in the just-ended 2019-2020 Rabi season.
Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) Officials said onion production continuously increasing every year in the last one decade because of various pragmatic programmes taken by the government.
“13,416 tonnes of onion has been produced this year, a sharp rise of 3,385 tonnes than that of 10,031 tonnes in the last 2018-2019 Rabi season,” Additional Director of the DAE of Khulna region agriculturist Kazi Abdul Mannan told BSS today.
The DAE had fixed a target of producing 10,148 tonnes of onion from 1,195 hectares of land in all four districts in the Khulna agriculture region this time.
“However, the farmers finally cultivated onion on 1,426 hectares of land exceeding the fixed farming target by 231 hectares,” Mannan added.
Diponkor Loskor, 42, a farmer of Kallayanpur village under Lohagora Upazila in Narail district, said he had cultivated onion on four bighas of land and harvested satisfactory yield. He is also happy over selling price.
He said there is a bright prospect of bringing more acreage under onion farming in the region as the farmers are very much interested in cultivating the crop for its feature of consuming less water.
The DAE, Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute, Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation and commercial banks extended all necessary assistance to the farmers to make the intensive onion farming programme a total success.
“The steps included distribution of high quality seeds, disbursements of easy-term agri-loans at lower interest rates, providing training and latest technologies, technical assistance and inputs under various programmes,” Agriculturist Mannan said.
“The Spices Research Institutes and other agricultural research institutions are laudably evolving high yielding winter and summer varieties of onion to further increase output and meet local demand without imports in the near future,” said Deputy Director of DAE in Khulna district Agriculturist Pankaj Kanti Majumder.
They cultivated the spicy cash crop on additional land with hope of getting fair price and the additional production contributed a lot towards restoring a tolerable situation in the onion markets at present.
Pankaj said the DAE had adopted various time-fitting measures including farmers training and providing incentives to them to boost the onion production.