The New Nation - Internet Edition

BSS, Rangpur

The sowing of maize seeds is getting momentum in all 16 districts of the country's northern region a little ahead of the traditional sowing period where an all-time record cultivation target has been fixed this season.

Sources said the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) has set the record target of producing 7,86,602 tonnes maize from 1,35,155 hectares of land in the region that is 67.65 percent of the whole national target during this season.

The national target of producing 11,63,418 tonnes of maize from two lakh hectares in all 64 districts has been fixed this year in the country, DAE officials said.

Large-scale maize farming has changed the fate of hundreds of poor people on the sandy-barren char lands in recent years and the farmers, including the flood-hit peasants, are preparing for farming the cash crop on more lands this year under the ongoing post-flood agri-rehabilitation programmes, the officials said.

DAE experts said cultivation of maize on vast abandoned and sandy-char lands and in dried-up beds of the rivers and their tributaries in the region brought about a revolutionary change to the poor farmers and unemployed youths during the past two consecutive years.

Besides, adequately favourable soil, climatic and topographic conditions and increasing poultry feed industries have encouraged the farmers to grow maize to a greater extent to earn more profits through farming of the cash crop, the experts said.

The flood-hit farmers in the char areas are bringing huge sandy-barren lands under maize farming for the third consecutive time this year as they got tremendous yield of the cash crop and its fair prices during the past two seasons, Deputy Director of the DAE, Rangpur, Kamal Shariful Alam told BSS.