Home ›› 11 Dec 2022 ›› Nation
Md Al Imran, a farmer and exporter from Birganjupazilain Dinajpur, is cultivating vegetables without chemical fertilisers and pesticides and exporting the produceto foreign countries.
Officials from the divisional Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) office in Mymensingh have expressed their satisfactionafter recently visiting his vegetable field in Birganj.
Due to low production cost and satisfactory profit, an increasing number of farmers in the locality are starting vegetable cultivation to export abroad.
Imran has cultivated pesticide-free cabbages on 150 bighas of land this year. Each of the cabbages, weighing around 3 kg, is sold forTk18-20to the exporting company. In the foreign market, each cabbage is sold at Tk80-100.
Cabbages of Imran’s field were exported to Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore last year. The addition of pesticide free cabbage to the export list has also created a new potential of foreign exchange earnings.
DAE officials think Bangladesh can earn huge amount of foreign currency by expanding its export volumein the global market of safe vegetables.
During the field visit, Deputy Director of MymensinghDivision Horticulture Centre DrShahidul Islam and agriculturist ZiaurRahmansaid that the DAE is providing all necessary cooperationand advice to the farmers for growing export standard cabbages,through intensive care from the time of planting the seedlings to the collection of cabbages.
The demand of organically cultivated cabbages has now gone beyond the bordercreating new sector to earn foreign currencies, they said.
Al Imran, also director of the exporting company “Nayem Agro”, has been cultivating pesticide-free ‘Atom Queen’ variety of cabbage for the last three years and started exporting them last year.
“Last year, it was exported three countries, and this year we are going to export the vegetable to five countries.We package the cabbages directly from the field and send it to export abroad,” he said.
“It takes only 90 days to produce pesticide-free cabbage,” said Al Imran who mainly initiated the production of safe vegetable in the upazilaand is expanding his business gradually.
Besides, every year more farmers are getting inspired as growing organic vegetables whichhave high demand in the domestic market also.
Earlier in July, the Parliament passed the ‘Pesticides Bill, 2018’ for the rational use and quality control of pesticides in the country.
In the proposed bill, registration of dealers, renewal of the registration term, cancellation of the registration, to award license for import and production of pesticides, license renewal, handover, cancellation, use of label, preservation of pesticides, control, price fixation, use and pesticides import and export under public and private companies have also been included.
Under the proposed bill, a 26-member pesticide technical advisory committee will also give advice to the government regarding registration of pesticides, quality control, implementation and application.
