Citrus fruit farming makes Rajshahi economy vibrant

Farming of Citrus fruits has been making the economy of the region including its vast Barind tract vibrant as many people are keen to cultivate the collateral cash crops.

Commercial farming of various kinds of citrus fruits, including malta, lemon, jujube and batabi lime has increased to a greater extent in the last couple of years, reports BSS.

Obaidullah Shah, a farmer of Tentulia village in Porsha upazila of Naogaon, has established a Malta orchard through transplanting 1,560 saplings on seven bighas of land in 2018 first.

He harvested fruit of around Tk 0.25 million the following year and earned around Tk 0.6 million last year.

He is expecting one and a half maund of fruit from each of the trees this year.

"I have established one more orchard on six bigha of land this year," said Obaidullah.

He gets suggestions from the local agricultural extension and research offices regularly. Shah said commercial cultivation of the citrus fruits has begun in many areas, making the farmers happy and enthusiastic side by side with vibrating the local economic activities.

Mazharul Islam, a returnee migrant from South Korea, has proved himself to be a successful entrepreneur since his involvement in various citrus fruit farming in Rajshahi barind area.

Islam, a resident of Benipur village under Godagari upazila, has so far developed fruit orchards on 43 bigha of land taking lease from others and two bigha of his own land.

Currently, he has 3,200 jujube trees as inter-cropping and 1,400 other high yielding jujube trees separately and all those are in fruit-bearing condition at present. Besides, he has china lemon farming on 20 bigha and china and Darjeeling orange on six bigha, BARI Malta-1 on six bigha and guava on six bigha of land.

When he was in South Korea, he learnt how to produce fruits of new varieties after the best uses of modern farming technologies. He was awarded the Employment Permit System (EPS) award by the Korean government as recognition for his seven best practices including discipline, Korean language, remittance and social works.

After getting the EPS award he travelled to Australia, Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Portugal and France with the Korean government.

Besides, he was given the proposal of providing a green card on behalf of the Korean government. But he returned to his homeland instead of accepting the lucrative proposal in 2018.

Since then, he kept himself involved in the fruit gardening in addition to various seasonal vegetables as intercropping and emerged himself as a potential fruit farmer.

Another returnee-migrant Kawsar Ali developed a malta orchard on a one-acre of land at Godagari upazila in Rajshahi.

Returning home from abroad after 12 years, Ali put in all-out efforts in the orchard. He planted Bari Malta-1 saplings two years ago, seeing a good return from the farming of the fruits.

In the current season, he has so far harvested and sold malta worth around Tk 0.15 million.

Kawsar Ali said when he returned home, he was confused about what to do. Then he became interested in farming Malta seeing many others in the locality.

He also learned that the farmers can get a good return from the farming of Malta as there is high demand for the fruit in the local market. But the fruit can be harvested after three years of planting the seedlings.

Cultivation of malta fruit will bring a revolution in the local economy as hundreds of people from ultra-poor families have attained self-reliance by cultivating the delicious fruit.