Home ›› 19 Aug 2022 ›› Front
Abul Kasem Milan (63), a farmer of Sandwip in Chattogram, has been farming for the last four decades in an area where saline water regularly enters but he too is now bashing his head against a brick wall.
The veteran farmer, who is used to farming in hostile environment, said: “We usually cultivate Aman paddy when the rainy season starts in June-July but I have never seen such a low rainfall during this time in 63 years.”
Let alone paddy production it will even be hard to collect straw, he said with a sigh.
Milan meets the year-round demand of his eight-member family with the paddy produced in his field and can sell several hundred maunds.
Naturally, Bangladesh is a very wet country, receiving on average about 2,200 millimeters (mm) of rainfall every year. Most regions receive at least 1,500 mm to 5,000 mm of rainfall per year.
The heaviest rainfall of the year occurs in July and the normal rainfall in this month is 496 mm, but the rainfall was only 211 mm in July 2022, 57 percent less than what is expected.
Aman paddy cultivation is supposed to be done on about 24,000 hectares of land in Sandwip, an island in the Bay of Bengal but less than half of the land has been planted with Aman paddy this year, said Masud Hossain, Agriculture Officer of Sandwip.
Many farmers could not plant paddy due to lack of water and many of those who had planted paddy also lost due to lack of water, said Sandwip Agriculture Officer Masud Alam.
Aman is totally dependent on rainwater for farming and there is no other option but to rely on nature.
There is a need for supplementary irrigation in this situation but in Sandwip, the coastal area, there is no provision for it, he added.
Sources said, 42 percent of the 1 crore 50 lakh tonnes of Aman paddy in 2021-22 was produced during the Aman season.
As crop cultivation is entirely dependent on the natural water major irrigation schemes in the country remain closed during this period.
Tidal water is an alternative
Sandwip, one of the country’s highest rainy areas, is expected to receive more than 800 mm of rainfall in the month of July, according to data from the Meteorological Office. But now most of the land there is now dry and cracked.
According to the information from the Agriculture Department, 11,000 hectares of land in Sandwip are producing several local varieties of saline-tolerant paddy.
Farmers here cultivate this paddy in extreme salinity-prone areas in their own ways. But due to lack of water, the production of this saline-tolerant variety of paddy is also under threat.
Many farmers who have planted the saline-tolerant variety ‘Rajashail’ have suffered. Due to lack of water, many seedlings of this variety have been destroyed.
But the last full moon tide inundated some land outside the embankment, which farmers are seeing as a blessing in disguise.
Abul Kalam, who started mechanized farming with the government encouragement this year, said, “We assumed that Rajashail paddy would be completely destroyed due to lack of water. But the inundation of the land by tidal water has made it suitable for re-cultivation.”
“Although salinity is a threat to agriculture we are trying to grow rice using salt water from the sea, which is also a very uncertain process, he said, adding that a lot of money has to be spent to replant rice.
According to the Agriculture Department, the salinity-prone coastal areas generally produce less crops but at this time of the year, salinity decreases in this region of the Meghna estuary of the Bay of Bengal.
Some local varieties of paddy including Rajashail can tolerate up to 7 t0 12DS/M salinity.
Bangladesh Rice Research Institute Director (Research) Dr Mohammad Khalekuzzaman said some local varieties of rice are grown in Chattogram and Noakhali regions, yield of which is not much compared to the cost of production.
Mentioning that improved varieties of saline-tolerant paddy have been developed for the coastal areas, he said.
Due to lack of rainfall this time the yield is expected to be very low across the country.
