Vegetable farming on 55,500 hectares in Sylhet

SYLHET, Jan 08: Different kinds of winter vegetables are being cultivated on 55,554 hectares of land in Sylhet division.

The crops include vegetables of all kinds including gourd, sweet gourd, radish, bean, tomato, cucumber, red spinach, pumpkin, cauliflower, cabbage, egg plant and taro etc.

Contacted, an official at the divisional office of DAE, Sylhet informed most of the farmers are busy on their croplands for farming these crops, which have an increasing demand all over the four districts in recent years. Although this would continue till February, many of the produce are already on the market by now.

Of the total area, highest 20,750 hectares are in Sylhet, 14,500 hectares in Habiganj, 11,441 hectares in Sunamganj and lowest 8863 hectares are in Moulvibazar district, the official informed. 

The DAE officials said further a good number of farmers got involved in the vegetable farming on barren land of different upazilas like Balaganj, Osmaninagar, Golapganj, Biswanath, Gowainghat, Jaintapur, Beanibazar and Kanaighat.

The farmers in many areas had also been involved at large scale with the vegetable farming on commercial basis, they added.

However, due to abundant supply of the vegetable items, the producers sell their produce at lower price, causing much harm to them. During the last two weeks the prices of most of the vegetable items had gone down, both on the wholesale and on the retail markets. However, the farmers, who manage early farming, get benefit financially.

Deputy Director at the DAE, Sylhet Md. Abul Hashem said commercial farming of vegetable of all kinds had been on rise day by day whereas most of the people of this region had almost no interest in vegetable farming years ago. Vast tracts of land remained fallow then.

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