Jaggery business boosts Rajshahi economy

Trade and production of date juice and gur (jaggery) are thriving everywhere in Rajshahi, generating employment opportunities for more than one lakh people.

The date juice is a natural and very delicate drink in winter as a large number of date juice collectors get a way of earning this season.

The juice collectors, locally known as ‘gachhis’, are passing busy times in collecting date juice and processing molasses at present.

Date juice extraction along with its follow-up business including processing has become a boon for many people as they are dependent 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 Tk 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 extraction of 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 date tree of his own. Every season, he manages permission to collect the juice from 120 trees at a cost of Tk 175.

Ali processed around 25 kilograms of molasses from the collected juice every day. He meets his annual family needs by getting a profit 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 maunds of molasses at Tk 60 per kilogram.

Mohsin Ali, a retailer in the same market, said he sold molasses at Tk 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 Tk 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 collect the juice accumulated 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).