Disfavorable weather frustrates potato farmers in Rajshahi

Disfavorable weather coupled with different diseases and unexpected market price have frustrated potato farmers as they are now harvesting less yield than the previous season in the region.
The farmers, however, are passing their busiest days in harvesting their seasonal cash crop everywhere in the region at present.
Many of the growers said that they are harvesting 30 sacs of potato (90 kilograms per sac) from per bigha of land. The previous season’s yield was better that this year. They had harvested 40-45 sacs of potato from per bigha of land in the last season.
Every sac of potato is being sold at Taka 700-750 this time like the previous season. The farmers are incurring loss due to less production. They spent around Taka 25,000 for per bigha of potato cultivation. But they couldn’t recoup the production cost with the sale proceed.
Many of the growers used overrated pesticides on their lands to prevent late blight and early blight caused by disfavorable weather creating adverse impact on the yield, said Dr Abdus Salam, Senior Scientific Officer of Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute.
The Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) had fixed a target of producing 30,48,600 tonnes of potato from 1,52,430 hectares of land in eight districts during the current Rabi season. But, the optimistic farmers have brought 1,67,374 hectares under potato farming from where more than 33.47 lakh tonnes are expected, official sources said. Potato farming has now been expanded to the dried lands in the vast Barind tract as a result of irrigation facilities promoted by the Barind Multipurpose Development Authorities (BMDA).
Meanwhile, Abdur Rahim, a farmer of Borgachhi village, said the farmers are not happy over the present market price and they will incur loss if the market price was same to the previous year. For inadequate preservation facilities in the region, they are forced to sell their potatoes at low price incurring loss, he also said.
This adverse situation would have impact on the cultivation of potato in the region in the years ahead as the growers would surely loss their interest to cultivate the crop again, he said.
For the last couple of years, many of the farmers were found encouraged to cultivate potato with promotion of modern farming system including hybrid variety.
Most of the farmers were seen opting for high yielding potato varieties and adopting scientific methods of cultivation, resulting in bumper yield, said Abu Bakkar Ali, president of Rajshahi Cold Storage Owners Association.
But the potato growers incurred losses last year as they did not get fair price of their produce, he said. To overcome the loss, he sought government intervention for exporting potato.
Abu Bakker says the government should take immediate measures after taking the problematic matter into kind and sincere consideration. “We have no way but to protect the interests of the producers to boost the agriculture sector,” he added.
Muhammad Ali Sarker, owner of Raj Cold Storage, said, ‘The government is initiating many safety-net programmes including VGF, VGD, OMS, FW and so on for vulnerable group development. I

t will be a great solution if government includes potato in the programmes which will help the farmers to get a reasonable price,’ he said.