Scanty water for retting jute deepening farmers’ troubles

Staff Reporter :
The lack of adequate rainfall in the monsoon has reduced the availability of natural water bodies, severely affecting the quality jute-fibre which is deepening the troubles of jute growers as the low quality fibre are offered low price in the market.

The jute growers are not harvesting their jute as there is a lack of adequate water for retting.

However, a section of farmers is also using diesel engine pumps for retting jute, which increases their production cost on the one hand and deteriorates the quality of the fibre on the other hand.

Farmer Lal Mia of Magura Sadar upazilla said they were incurring higher production costs for using water pumps to source the required water.

Without proper retting due to the scanty number of water bodies, this year jute is losing colour and quality. As a result, farmers get Tk 900 to Tk 500 less per maund.

Locally, jute is currently selling at Tk 2,100 to Tk 2,800 per maund.
Mezbar Ali, a jute grower, from Kamarkhali at Madhukhali upazilla of Faridpur said the current cost of a day labourer is Tk600-700 on the field, and prices of equipment have gone up in recent times.

They can only produce 5-6 mounds of jute on one bigha and harvesting each maund costs them over Tk2,000. The price per maund of jute is currently Tk2,000-2,300. As a result, farmers are incurring losses, he informed.

The situation was also acknowledged by Md Ziaul Haque, deputy director of the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) of Faridpur, said jute farmers are facing problems this year due to a lack of adequate rainfall.

The DAE refers to adopt the ribbon retting method (which requires less water) but farmers are reluctant as they cannot avail jute sticks which fetch good prices.

Apart from these, the local jute market may face further stress as the Indian government plans to impose countervailing duty (CVD) on their shipment of jute and jute goods, at a time when jute and jute goods exporters are already facing an anti-dumping duty (ADD) in the market.

It is reported India has started investigation to levy CVD as it thinks that its domestic industry is being hurt by the subsidies provided by Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, the DAE data showed that it has been targeted to produce 89.87 lakh bales of jute in the current financial year of 2023-24 using 7.64 lakh hectares of land across the country.

Due to these difficulties, experts expressed apprehension about meeting the target of jute production this year.