The farmers produced an all-time record 18.01-lakh tonnes of clean Transplanted Aman (T-Aman) rice (27-lakh tonnes paddy) despite little damage caused to the crop by floods in Rangpur agriculture region this season.Officials of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) said farmers previously produced another record 17.69-lakh tonnes of clean T-Aman rice (26.54-lakh tonnes paddy) during the last season in the region.
The DAE had fixed a target of producing 18.08-lakh tonnes of clean T-Aman rice from 6.35-lakh hectares of land for the region this season while farmers finally cultivated the crop on 6.08-lakh hectares of land as flood caused little damage to the crop.
However, the cultivated land area of T-Aman rice on 6.08-lakh hectares of land this year was higher by about 5,000 hectares than the cultivated land area of the crop on 6.03-lakh hectares of land last year.
Deputy Director of the DAE at its regional office Agriculturist Md. Moniruzzaman said recent flood damaged T-Aman rice crop on 43.75 hectares of land and its seedlings on 5,216 hectares of land causing loss of Taka 59.43 crore this season.
“The government promptly implemented agri-rehabilitation programs spending Taka 1.42 crore assisting 14,743 flood-hit farmers of Kurigram, Gaibandha and Lalmonirhat to make Aman rice farming programme successful in the region,” he said.
Following re-transplantation of T-Amn rice seedlings on damaged croplands, excellent weather and frequent rainfalls, farmers harvested an all-time record 18.01-lakh tonnes of T-Aman rice in the region this season.
Of them, farmers produced 1.61-lakh tonnes of hybrid variety T-Aman rice from 46,304 hectares of land, 15.63-lakh tonnes of high yielding variety rice from 5.21-lakh hectares and 76,270 tonnes of local variety T-Aman rice from 41,852 hectares of land.
The achieved excellent yield rates of T-Aman rice stood at 3.48 tonnes per hectare for hybrid variety, 3.0 tonnes for high yielding variety and 1.84 tonnes per hectare for local variety of T-Aman rice this season.
“The farmers finally got a higher average yield rate of 2.96 tonnes of clean T-Aman rice per hectare of land this time against the achieved average per hectare yield rate of 2.91 tonnes of T-Aman rice last year,” Moniruzzaman added.
Talking to BSS, bigger farmer Ariful Haque of village Najirdigar in Rangpur Sadar said he cultivated T-Aman rice on seven acres of land, completed harvest and got 38 mounds yield of the crop in terms of paddy per acre on an average this time.
“The yield rate 38 mounds of T-Aman paddy this year is higher by two mounds per acre than the achieved yield rate of 35 mounds paddy per acre last year,” Batul said, hoping that he would be able to sell his paddy to the government purchasing centres.
Similarly, farmers Lokman Hossain and Shamsul Haque of Rangpur, Nurul Amin and Abdus Salam of Kurigram Mujibur Rahman of Nilphamari and Abdul Haque of Lalmonirhat said they also achieved bumper T-Aman rice production this season.
Additional Director of DAE for Rangpur region Agriculturist Muhammad Ali said farmers achieved record T-Aman rice output this season following excellent growth of crop plants amid favourable weather even after little damages caused by floods, reports BSS from Rangpur.
