Farmers want cheaper agricultural inputs to grow more rice

FE Team | Published: June 25, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

Farmers want cheaper agricultural inputs to grow more rice and achieve sustainability in staple food production.
Currently, most of the rice growers are spending Taka 4,500 to as much as Taka 13,500 to grow rice in a bigha of land, some farmers of the Mathurapur village of Nandigram upazila of Bogra district told a group of reporters, reports BSS.
The reporters, members of the Forum for Information Dissemination on Agriculture (FIDA), were visiting the area to report on Aus crop yield and its market price at the grower level. Syngenta, the world leading company in life science, supported the visit.
Around 50 farmers from the neighborhood gathered in front of a farmer's house to talk to the journalists. They candidly responded to various queries on the production cost of rice, market prices and the problems and prospects of farming.
None of the farmers gathered there, however, could give a clear picture about their cost of production. Some said they spent around Taka 4,500 per bigha for Aus crop when some others came up with the figure as much as Taka 13,500.
Syngenta filed officials, who are very much integrated with the farming process in this area, helped the farmers to come to a conclusion about their cost of farming, but they were not unanimous about any figure. The farmers, however, admitted that this year none of them incurred any loss.
Farmers of the area got around 36 per cent more price for the Aus crop this year, but they think the price was still not enough to make agriculture commercially viable because of higher prices of agro- inputs like irrigation and pesticides.
Abdul Jalil Pramanik, an elderly farmer of Mathurapur, said rice production should be made commercially viable to encourage farmers grow more crops. Otherwise, he said, more crops especially rice production would not be sustainable.
He suggests making agricultural inputs cheaper to bring production cost down so farmers can get higher profit margin without further increase in prices of rice and other staple foods.
Aus paddy, direct from the filed, were sold at Taka 750 a maund last week at Ranbagha Haat, a major wholesale market in northern region where buyers came from different parts of the country to buy paddy. The dried paddy price was higher by around Tk 100 per maund over the price of the wet paddy.
Ranbagha is best known for the high quality Mini Ket rice variety, which costs buyers at least Taka 50 more per maund compared to other wholesale markets, farmers of Mathurapur village of Nandigram upazila said.
Last year, the farmers of this area got Taka 550 per maund for the same crop because of low demand. Many farmers incurred loss because of the low price when only a few managed to make money at par their production cost by storing paddy and selling those later.
Ziaur Rahman Shapla, who grew around 2,700 maund of paddy during last Aus season in his 100 bighas of land, said most of the farmers sell at least half of their crop direct from the filed as they do not have enough space in their houses for storage.
Besides, farmers cannot sell paddy in market during heavy monsoon because buyers hardly brave the inclement weather to come to the market, he said.
"We urgently need an automated rice mill in this area so farmers can sell their crop directly to millers," Nazrul Islam, another farmer of Mathurapur, said.
The nearest auto rice mill is no less than 25 kilometers away from this area, the farmers said, adding that they often struggle to get fair and even government-fixed price of rice as they depend on beparis or fariahs (middlemen) who always get desperate for bargain price, and take the advantage of any adverse conditions like bad weather.