Eight Northern Districts
Off season mung bean cultivation begins
Rangpur-Dinajpur Rural Service (RDRS) has started its programme for large-scale off season mung beans farming in Rangpur division as an additional cash.
The programme is expected to help meet the country's pulse demand side by side bring huge profits to the farmers of the northern districts.
Executives of the NGO told the news agency that repeated successes achieved in farming the item during the past few years have encouraged the growers to go for large-scale cultivation this month.
RDRS achieved tremendous results while conducting field level researches on mung beans farming in recent years jointly with Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI) and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agriculture University (BSMRAU).
Head of Agriculture of RDRS, MG Neogi said mung beans could be cultivated in large scale in only 60 days and its massive farming programme has been taken this time with the help of Krishi Gobeshona Foundation (KGF).
He said the item could be one of the most profitable cash crops especially in the poverty and monga-prone region as its cultivation is more profitable than any other crops under the aman-potato-mung beans-aman cropping patterns.
Seventy percent of the total high and medium high cultivable lands with dewatering facilities are fit for farming mung beans and its expanded cultivation can usher in a new era in the pulse farming sector.
After harvesting early potato, farmers can sow mung seeds in the same land by March and can harvest the crop within 60 days by May to cultivate T-aman paddy in the same land by June/July under the said cropping pattern, he said.
The research showed that mung beans farming needs no chemical fertilisers and the land regains its lost health and becomes very fertile when the mung plants are mixed with the soil after its harvests to yield more productions of the subsequent crops.
Neogi said at least 1,800 farmers of eight districts in the division cultivated the item last year with the assistance of BARI, BSMRAU and RDRS and achieved excellent yield rates.
Last year, farmers of these districts successfully cultivated BARI Mung-6, BU Mung-4 variety and harvested the crop by the month of May.
The farmers got an average yield of 450 kg per acre to earn a good profit as it required only Tk 9,000 per acre for cultivating the crop, he said.
This time, around 5,000 farmers will cultivate mung on 5,000 bighas using their seeds preserved last season with the assistance of RDRS in Rangpur, Dinajpur, Lalmonirhat, Kurigram, Nilphamari, Gaibandha, Panchagarh and Thakurgaon.
Besides, some 500 more farmers will cultivate the item on about 50 bighas under the direct assistance of BARI, BSMRAU and RDRS in these districts, senior manager, crop, KM Marufuzzaman of RDRS told the news agency.
The RDRS experts said that large scale farming of the short period pulse can largely help the poorer section, small and marginal farmers in changing their lots in the poverty-stricken Rangpur division and the region as a whole.
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