RANGPUR, Nov 11 (BSS): The Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) has fixed a target for farmers to produce 0.41 million tonnes of wheat from 0.12 million hectares in Rangpur division during this Rabi season.
The DAE officials said 78,478 tonnes of wheat will be produced from 23,760 hectares in five districts of Rangpur agriculture region and 0.33 million tonnes of wheat from 0.10 million hectares of land in three districts of Dinajpur agriculture region.
Meanwhile, the farmers of all eight districts in the division have started preparing crop lands for sowing wheat seed after harvesting early varieties of Transplanted Aman (T-Aman) rice varieties.
The government is distributing 670 tonnes of wheat seed, 670 tonnes of Di-ammonium Phosphate (DAP) and 335 tonnes of Muriate of Potash (MoP) fertilisers among 33,500 farmers under agriculture incentives programme to promote wheat farming in the region.
"Under the programme, each of the beneficiary farmers is getting 20-kg wheat seed, 20-kg DAP and 10-kg MoP fertilisers free of costs for cultivating wheat on one bigha of land," said horticulture specialist of DAE Khondker Md Mesbahul Islam.
The farmers are showing more interest in cultivating wheat in both of the two agriculture regions of Rangpur division this year after getting repeated bumper productions with lucrative market price of the cereal crop in recent years.
"The farmers have just started sowing wheat seed as the process will get momentum with further progress in harvesting T-Aman rice crop allover Rangpur division from this month-end," Islam said.
The DAE, the Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation (BADC), the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI) and other agriculture-related organisations and institutions have taken steps to make wheat cultivation programme a success.
"The government has taken adequate steps to ensure supply of quality wheat seed, latest technologies, fertilisers and other inputs to the farmers to promote cultivation of the profitable cereal crop that has a huge demand in local markets," Islam added.
Talking to the news agency, deputy director of the DAE at its regional office Md Moniruzzaman said the farmers are showing more interest in cultivating less irrigation water consuming wheat using latest technologies to save groundwater and earn more profits.
"Wheat farming has already become popular and more profitable among the farmers who got its repeated bumper productions at less farming costs along with rewarding market price in recent years," Moniruzzaman added.
Rangpur Regional Additional Director of DAE Md Shah Alam said the farmers are cultivating the high yielding wheat varieties after getting excellent yield following less pests' attacks in recent years.
"The yield rate of wheat is increasing every year as the farmers are mostly cultivating the disease resistant- and stress tolerant-varieties of wheat adopting conservation agriculture technologies and proper agronomic managements," Alam added.
Farmers Mofizar Rahman of Taraganj upazila and Eshak Ali of Sadar upazila in Rangpur said they already sowed wheat seed in their lands after harvesting T-Aman rice recently as the process is getting momentum day by day everywhere.
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