HYV vegetables elevate Barguna farmers\\\' fate

BARGUNA, Feb 19 (UNB): A good number of farmers in Amtali upazila of the district have learnt to turn around economically by cultivating different high-yielding varieties (HYV) of vegetables.

Cost-effective farming of the highly profitable vegetables has brought many poor sharecroppers in the upazila economic self-sufficiency.

The sharecroppers narrated their stories of becoming self-reliant to the UNB correspondent while visiting different areas of the upazila recently.

Anisur Rahman, a sharecropper turned self-reliant farmer of Amtoli, said "I made good profit by cultivating HYV vegetables on shared land last year and got good output. This year, I have grown vegetables of these kinds on my own purchased one acre (per acre=30 decimals) of land."

The farmer said he has already earned Tk50,000 from the sale of this year's harvest. Like him, many sharecroppers have similar tales to tell.

They are now farming vegetables on their own lands though they had to depend on others' lands earlier.

Asked why they inclined to farming of HYV vegetables, the farmers said Payra Agro Ltd, a private seed company, motivated them in mixed farming of HYV vegetables on their farmlands.

They said the company not only gave them instructions to grow two crops on the same land simultaneously but also provided them with high-yielding variety vegetable seeds at lower prices.