By Dr Aynal Haque
RAJSHAHI, Nov 20, 2020 (BSS)- Farming of beans, one of the delicious vegetables, has been gaining popularity everywhere in Rajshahi region including its vast Barind tract for the last couple of years as a result of the rising number of commercial farmers of the cash crop.
Growers are seen getting lucrative price of the newly harvested vegetable besides other early variety winter vegetables making the consumers in general also happy at present.
Abdul Mazid, 35, a farmer of Soipara village under Mohanpur upazila in the district, has already sold beans valued around Taka 65,000 from his farming field in the current season. He has become delighted with good yield and lucrative market prices of the vegetable.
Mazid has cultivated the vegetable on around one bigha of land commercially. Each kilogram of the vegetable is being sold at Taka 40-45 from his farming field directly at present while it is being sold at Taka 60-70 in retail markets.
He’s hoping to sell beans worth over Taka two lakh from his field this season.
Large numbers of farmers like Abdul Mazid are now engaged in bean cultivation commercially considering its economic prospect after the best uses of modern technologies and high yielding varieties like Ghritakanchan and Rupbhan.
While visiting some farming areas of the region like Huzripara, Chowbaria, Darusha, Rajabari, Haripur and Pakri recently this reporter found that farmers nursing their bean-field with much enthusiasm.
The plants were covered with massive green leaves, multicolor flowers and beans. At present, harvested beans have appeared in the local markets abundantly.
Ariful Islam, a farmer of Sorail village, has cultivated beans on 10 katha of low-lying land and already harvested crops valued at Taka 45,000. He spent Taka 17,000 for the farming purposes.
He told BSS that a silent revolution has taken place in beans farming in different areas of the Barind tract.
Beans cultivation has become an effective means of bringing fortune for many farmers in the region comprising 25 upazilas of Rajshahi, Chapainawabganj and Naogaon districts in both summer and winter seasons, said Jahangir Alam Khan, project coordinator of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM).
He said the farmers are becoming habituated to cultivating beans on homesteads, demarcating lands of paddy fields and other catchment areas as they are earning money regularly.
Marginal farmers and the poor people in the region are mostly engaged in this venture by making the best use of spaces around their homes over the last couple of years.
Jahangir Khan said the farmers are now not dependent on selling their cash crops in nearly hats and Bazar because the wholesalers are seen purchasing all the seasonal vegetables from the farming fields directly.
Large-scale promotion of homestead gardening is being adjudged as an effective means of making the villagers self-reliant as they are getting regular cash crops together with meeting up the nutritional demands.
Sirajul Islam, additional director of Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE), said the farmers in the region are successfully producing varieties of winter vegetables like beans, cauliflower, cabbage, radish, carrot, beet, turnip, tomato, leafy spinach, red spinach, and receiving lucrative prices in the wholesale markets.
He said the growers are very much happy as they avail the scopes of recouping the losses caused by the adverse impacts of novel coronavirus (Covid-19) and devastating flood through catching the lucrative high price markets of early varieties of vegetables.
Agriculturist Islam said around 70,500 hectares of land have already brought under vegetable cultivation in the region this year. The production target has been set at about 23.56 tonnes from each hectare of land.
Around 20.42 lakh tonnes of vegetables are expected to be produced from 86,653 hectares of land in all eight districts of Rajshahi division during the current Rabi season.