Aus farmers to get fertiliser free of cost

The government from next week will start supplying fertiliser free of cost to some 5,37,000 Aus farmers to encourage them to produce the rice variety, official sources said. Every farmer will get 20 kilogramme (kg) of urea fertiliser, 10 kg of Triple Super Phosphate (TSP) 10 kg of and Muriate of Potash (MoP) to cultivate each bigha of land. Some 74,400 hectares of land have been brought under this incentive package. A farmer will get the incentive for one bigha of land. The programme will cost the government Tk 350 million. "The stimulation came with a target to produce an additional 200,000 tonnes of rice," a top official of the ministry of agriculture told the FE. The farmers have already been given cards to draw the fertilisers from the government appointed dealers, he said. The government this year has set a target to produce some 34,540,000 tonnes of rice of which 2,740,000 tonnes will be of Aus variety, 13,100,000 tonnes of Aman variety and 18,700,000 tonnes of Boro variety. According to the Agriculture Extension Department statistics, Aus production may go up by nearly 2.5 tonnes per hectare for providing farmers fertiliser free of cost. Aus variety of paddy is produced during the May-August period. An official said farmers who have already started to harvest Boro paddy or whose lands remained fallow will be able to cultivate Aus this year. He said Aus production fell drastically after Boro and some other high yielding varieties (HYV) were introduced. Some farmers are producing another IRRI variety between the Boro and the Aman periods. Recently farmers have become less interested to produce the IRRI variety. This year the government is providing the incentive in fertiliser form to encourage farmers to produce Aus during the lean period, the official added.