Speakers at a training programme here have urged farmers to promote modern technologies especially raised bed system for boosting crop yield to ensure food security of the country\’s gradually increasing population.
They also urged the croppers to cultivate four less-irrigated crops- wheat, maize, chickpea and lentil- through promoting the updated technologies instead of relying only on the Irri-Boro to face the water-stress condition caused by various natural and manmade catastrophes in the dried area.
The modern technologies are being adjudged as proven tools of cropping intensity increase by 25 percent, production cost reduction by 40 percent, system productivity increase by 20-25 percent and farmers income increase by 30-40 percent as a whole, they added.
The raining programme titled \’Validation and up-scaling of resource conserving technologies for improving productivity in drought-prone areas\’ was held at Rajabari High School under Godagari Upazila of the district Friday.
Regional Wheat Research Center (RWRC), an organ of Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institution, organized the training for disseminating ideas of modern farming technologies and strategies among the grassroots farmers.
In his keynote speech, Dr Ilias Hossain, Senior Scientific Officer of RWRC, viewed that the raised-bed system always help increasing water use efficiency coupled with boosting cropping intensity and system productivity through reducing the existing time gap between the two crops in drought-prone area.
The technology contains some other special features like labour saving, easier crop management and higher yield. It allows higher yield through reducing the application rate of irrigation water. Thereby, the food production increases feeding more peoples.
The raised bed planting technology is very promising and the farmers should adopt technology and practice in various cropping fields like wheat, maize, mugbean and lentil. The raised bed planter save time and cost of cultivation and the seeding operation is finished during ploughing time.
As a whole, Dr Ilias views the technology could be promoted to a greater extent if, in near future, a nationwide pilot project was adopted.
Taking part in the open discussion, the farmers put forward a set of recommendations like machinery purchase on subsidized rate for its proper acceleration and dissemination, more training for the farmers, operators, extension workers, machinery manufacturers and ICM club members.
The stressed the need for popularizing the raised bed method widely so that the farmers can derive total benefits of the technology.
Among others, RWRC Scientific Officer Zahidul Islam and headmaster of the school Akhteruzzaman also spoke. -BSS, Rajshahi
