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SYLHET, Mar 19: Boro cultivation target has exceeded in Sylhet division this season amid a good weather condition.
However, for reasons the cultivation much-awaited crop in the region had been hit for days at the beginning. Most of the farmers in different lower areas suffered for delayed recession of waters from haors, mostly in the district of Sunamganj and Habiganj.
DAE officials said the cold wave had affected the seedbed preparation on some areas as the farmers couldn't work on the field for longer time whereas they needed to work for hours to preparing the Boro seedbeds.
On the other hand, the Water Development Board (WDB) couldn't start construction and reconstruction of the crop protection embankments in many haor areas in time and things were delayed as yet in many areas.
The DAE earlier had set the Boro farming target on 475, 389 hectares in the division. However, the crop is cultivated on about 481,521 hectares in these districts. It includes 269,446 hectares in haor region and the rest 212,075 hectares in non-haor areas.
The total includes 83,350 hectares in Sylhet, 54,012 hectares in Moulvibazar, 121,430 hectares in Habiganj and highest 222,729 hectares in the district of Sunamganj.
Additional director of DAE, Sylhet division, Md Altabur Rahman said this time the target is been surpassed since new areas came under cultivation. Yet the weather is good enough while the farmers now trying to get highest yield since they had suffered devastating crop loss last year.
Since the last year's Boro crop was almost totally destroyed by the repeated and early floods and excess rains coupled with rolling down of waters from the upstream in the Indian states of Meghalaya and Assam, they are doing hard this year.
The government this year provided assistance in seed, fertiliser and cash to over 40,5000 listed poor and marginal farmers in the division. Of them highest 300,000 was in Sunamganj. The PM and President as well as some ministers also visited the region to see for themselves.