RDRS distributes seeds among farmers in Gaibandha

GAIBANDHA, Apr 17 (BSS): A total of 60 farmers of Laxmipur union of Sadar upazila in the district got seeds of short duration paddy Parija from RDRS Bangladesh free of cost on Wednesday.
Deputy Director (DD) of Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) Mir Abdur Razzak distributed the seeds among the farmers at a function as the chief guest while programme manager of RDRS Bangladesh Porsia Rahman presided over.
The function was also addressed, among others, by sub assistant agriculture officer Abdus Sabur, technical officer (Agriculture) Saiful Islam, research assistant of Kri Gobeshana Foundation M. Shariful Islam and farmer Shamsul Alam.
The speakers in their speeches said a farmer could get four crops in a year easily if he or she could farm short duration Aman paddy-mustard/potato-mung bean-parija paddy systematically following the suggestions of agri officials.
DD of DAE urged the field level agri officials particularly the SAAOs to motivate the farmers to turn their two or three crop land into four crop one by cultivating above mentioned crops to help achieve country's food security.
He also advised the farmers to avoid the farming of boro paddy which are produced using highly cost irrigated water lifted from the underground to make the environment safe from the hazards in future.
The objective of the crop pattern change is to keep the agro production increasing anyhow by coping with the changed climatic condition to meet the growing demand of food, he added. Technical officer (Agriculture) Saiful Islam said RDRS Bangladesh took up a plan to farm parija paddy on 240 bighas of land in the district this year with the financial support of Church of Sweden and in cooperation of DAE.
Initiative was also taken to provide training and agri inputs including fertilizers to the farmers to make the farming a grand success side by side with creating working opportunities to the farm day labors all the year round, he also said.