Farmers and officials of the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) are expecting a bumper production of winter vegetables in Khulna in the current Rabi season.
All varieties of winter vegetable have flooded the city’s kitchen markets with excellent yield rate under favourable climate condition, official sources said.The DAE, Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation and Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute have distributed sufficient quantity of
quality seeds, other agro-inputs to the farmers and provided them with necessary technical assistance. Besides, different banks, including Khulna Krishi Bank and NGO’s have disbursed agriculture loans and interest-free loans among the farmers to make the massive winter vegetables programme a success.Meanwhile, the early and excellent continuous harvests of the vegetables have also brought smiles to the farmers as they are getting additional prices at the beginning of the season, farmers and vegetable vendors said.The DAE has fixed a production target of 1,10, 484 tonnes of winter vegetables from 5,450 hectares of land in the district with an average yield rate of 20.44 tonnes per hectare during the current Rabi season.The DAE officials are expecting a bumper production of winter vegetables including potato and sweet potato during the current Rabi season.Deputy Director of DAE Md. Abdul Aziz told BSS that DAE has fixed a production target of 6, 280 tonnes of potato from 380 hectares of land and 476 tonnes of sweet potato from 28 hectares of land in Khulna.He, however, said the farmers are expected to bring more land than the target as many people have been cultivating winter vegetables at their shrimp gher areas in the district. On the other hand, the vegetable traders in Khulna have already started sending huge quantities of
early variety of vegetables to different districts including Dhaka by trucks and pick-up every day. BSS, Khulna
