Saplings being prepared on floating seedbeds

The Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in Netrakona is making floating seedbeds for poor and marginal farmers who have been affected by the recent floods.

Around 6,000 farmers, nearly half of whom are very poor, were affected in the district where three back-to-back floods damaged seedbeds on 575 acres, Aus fields on 45 acres and vegetables on around 4 acres of land, said Habibur Rahman, deputy director of DAE in Netrakona. The damage has been estimated at over Tk 76 lakh.

With the help of the affected farmers, as many as 120 floating seedbeds are being prepared to produce saplings on 15 acres of land in flood affected Sadar, Barhatta, Mohanganj, Khaliajuri, Kalmakanda and Purbodhala upazilas in Netrakona. 

The saplings will be ready for distribution among the affected farmers within a month, he also said.

Mostafa Kamal, upazila agriculture officer in Mohanganj, said local farmers have made 36 floating seedbeds in Nagdora Beel, a water body in the upazila, where they are growing saplings of BR-22, a late variety of rice.

The saplings produced there would be distributed among the poor and marginal farmers in the first week of September, he added.

A Phulpur-based voluntary organisation, HELDS Foundation, has also come forward and joined hands with the effort.

Their volunteers are preparing floating seedbeds for Aman saplings for distribution among flood-affected farmers in Phulpur upazila of Mymensingh, said Tasfique Haque, secretary of the organisation.

"We came forward to assist the local agricultural department as about 1,500 farmers in the upazila, which is still under floodwater, had not been able to prepare seedbeds for Aman cultivation."

Local farmers helped them make the floating seedbeds and local agriculture officials advised them on how to prepare the beds with banana tree and water hyacinth.

The saplings on the seedbeds would be ready for planting within 25 days and those would be those would be handed over to the affected farmers for free, he said.

Contacted, Abdullah Al Mamun, agriculture officer in Phulpur upazila, said seedbeds on eight acres of land were damaged in recent floods in the upazila.

With support from farmers and volunteers, they used three acres of land to make 12 floating seedbeds, which they named "Community Seedbeds," he said. "Affected farmers also helped us prepare seedbeds on 416 trays."