Water lilies bring solvency to many in Barishal 

During the rainy season, when vast cropland on the low lying areas go underwater, thousands of underprivileged people in Satla union of Wazirpur upazila and Bakal, Bagdha unions of Agailjhara upazila under Barishal district make their living by plucking water lilies from around 50 water bodies stretching over 3500 hectares.

“Four in our family spend morning to night collecting lilies,” says Shankar Bepari, a resident of Wazirpur.

“Later, my wife, son and daughter clean and sort them into 40 to 50 bundles for sale,” he added.

According to Shankar, a bundle ( 10 lily stems) sells for up to Tk 40, a rate that provides him between Tk 400 – 500 per day as minimum daily earnings.

His neighbour, farmer Anwar Hossain from Bagda village under Agailjhara, who works as a day labourer in summer, is also trading the common vegetables.

He said, “We sell the vegetables to wholesalers who come to the area for the water lilies.”

“After selling to them, we tie the rest of these stems, place it underwater for the night and sell these to local markets the next morning. We earn around Tk 5 to Tk 10 for 10 to 15 lily stems,” he added.

Bhabatosh Majhi, a farmer from Bakal area of Agailjhara upazila told The Business Post that wholesalers collect a large number of lilies from them and transport it to different upazilas of Barishal and Madaripur.

“The pandemic has been a blow for a day labourers like me. We are destitute and surviving solely on the natural reservoir filled with lilies,” he added.

In this way, the water lily has become a valuable lifeline for thousands of struggling and economically marginal families across the Barishal district and the additional income source for these people during the rainy season when the day labourers and farmers in the low-lying areas find other work hard to come by, said Abdul Khaleq Azad, chairman of Satla Union Parishad in Wazirpur.

Seasonal unemployed workers rely on lily harvesting as a means to maintain solvency through the employment lean season. In towns of villages, lilies, known as nutritious food, are mashed, fried and added to various traditional dishes, he said. 

However, excessive use of chemical fertilizers for cultivation and fishers farming carp varieties of fish in these water bodies are ruining the natural growth, expansion of lilies, said lily collectors and the Department of Agricultural Extension sources.

In Barishal, there are three varieties of lilies, white, red, and burgundy, which grow in abundance as a mixed population in almost all shallow natural water bodies, said Upazila Agriculture Officer of DAE, Nasir Uddin.

“Lilies have great nutritional and medicinal properties, that are why are becoming popular among people as a vegetable all around the country,” said Additional Deputy Director of Barishal Divisional Agriculture Extension Department (Khamarbari) Mosammat Maryam.