Orange becomes a money spinner for Panchagarh farmers

PANCHAGARH: Cultivation of orange on commercial basis has gained popularity among the farmers in the district as they are getting excellent production in recent years.

With the assistance of Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), farmers of the district have started to cultivate the juicy-fruit after cultivating tea as its market demand is good, a DAE official said. Now, they are happy to see a good yield of orange in their small orchards, he added.

The DAE has fixed a target to bring more lands under the orange cultivation while orange is being cultivated around 15 hectares of land here.

Sefali Begum of Bamonpara village under Sadar upazila, said: "I have cultivated orange on six bighas of land this year. Last year, I sold orange about Tk 0.1 million and this year I'm expecting to sell orange over Tk 0.2 million."

Habibul Nabi, resident of the same area, said he had collected orange sapling from the DAE in 2009 and have been selling orange since six years and earn a good profit. Per kilogram orange is being sold Tk 150 to Tk 200 here, he added.

Deputy Director of the DAE, Panchagarh Md Rias Uddin said land of the district are becoming suitable for orange cultivation and the farming has become popular in the district since its commercial cultivation began under the five-year term (2006-2011) of Orange Development Project (ODP) of the DAE.

The DAE is giving all kinds of modern technologies support to the farmers for boosting orange production in the district, the DD added.

The country is spending a huge amount of foreign currency every year for importing oranges from India and some other countries. But a large quantity of it can easily be grown in Panchagarh and its adjacent districts if the government provides proper assistance.

This would also help improve the economic condition of the poverty- stricken people of the country's northern region, the official added.