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Trading and business of date palm juice and molasses have been thriving everywhere, generating employment opportunities for more than one lakh people.
A large number of date palm juice collectors get a way of earning in winter.
The date palm juice collectors, locally known as 'gachhis', are passing busy times in collecting date palm juice and processing molasses at present.
Date palm juice along with its follow-up business including processing has become a boon for many people as they depend on it for a long to make their fortunes in the region.
Villagers said three upazilas --- Charghat, Bagha and Puthiya along with adjacent areas of those -- are famous for date molasses. The trading of date molasses is now at the closing moment as the winter says goodbye to the current season.Suman Sarker, a molasses wholesaler at Jhalmalia Hat in the same upazila,
said the volume of molasses business every hat day is more than Taka 10 million.
He said blacksmiths are busy with making sharp crescent-shaped machetes that are used in cleaning and removing layers from the neck of the date tree for extracting juice.
Potters are struggling to supply specially designed small earthen pots for the collection of juice and big ones for boiling the juice to produce molasses, which are sold in markets all over the country through traders.
Suman Sarker hoped that the business will play a vital role in changing the socio-economic condition of the whole region if everybody comes forward to plant trees in fallow lands.
Produced molasses by the farmers in the three upazilas are exported to many foreign countries, escalating the rural economy.
Ramzan Ali, a date juice harvester of Hatgodagari Kathalpara village under Paba upazila, said he has no any date tree of his own. Every season, he manages permission to collect the juice from 120 trees at a cost of Taka 175.
Ali processed around 25 kilograms of molasses from the collected juice every day. He meets his annual family needs by getting profits doing the seasonal molasses business.
Trader Anwar Hossain, who comes to Jhalmalia Bazar from Barisal every year to purchase molasses, said that he purchased 40 mounds of molasses at Taka 60 per kilogram.
Mohsin Ali, a retailer in the same market, said he sold molasses at Taka 65 per kilogram last week and the retail price is now on a downtrend with rising production.
He said the farmers of the upazila send molasses to different areas of the country including the capital every year.
If they can expand the business, they would achieve huge profits and change their socioeconomic conditions, he added.
Mozder Hossain, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), said there are more than 0.8 million date trees in the district producing around 8,000 tonnes of molasses valued at around Taka 600 million every season.
There are a total of 0.39 million trees in Charghat upazila followed by 0.29 million in Bagha upazila and 85,000 in Puthiya upazila.
There are also many other date trees on the roadside, railway tracks and on fallow lands and homesteads while date molasses are produced commercially.
Agriculturalist Hossain said the farmers accumulate the juice in the clay pot overnight. They evaporate the juice by heating it the next morning to make it solid (Patali gur) or thick slurry (Jhola gur).
He said a farmer can produce 20 to 25 kg of molasses from a single date tree in a season. As there is no need for extra care of the trees, it may be a very profitable business.
He added that having molasses regularly with rice and other nutritious foods is very essential for humans, especially children for developing their merit.
