The New Nation - Internet Edition

BSS, Rajshahi

'Rajshahi Dairy and Cattle Improvement Farm' has lost its functional activity at a larger extent despite enormous potentiality relating to expansion of dairy farming leading to meeting up the deficiency of milk and meat.

According to the sources concerned, the farm is now on the verge of nonfunctional due to multifarious reasons especially political pressure and other unethical interferences during the last 15 to 20 years.

The farm was established on a huge 139 acres of land in Rajabarihat area under Godagari upazila of the district with the prime objective of breeding domestic animal along with increasing good breed of cattle.

Other objectives of the farm include production of milk and meat and to supply calves for artificial breeding to the Central Cattle Breeding and Milk Farm at Savar.

Production of good breed cattle from existing indigenous stock by applying artificial breeding technology particularly Shahiwal and local cattle cross breeding was another aim of the farm.

To attain the goals, fodder yard, cattle-shed, afforestation, pond and residential buildings had been arranged on the acquired lands subsequently.

In addition to rearing 528 cows including 329 calves and 191 milching ones, the farm has been operating an artificial insemination laboratory and a nitrogen plant for distributing frozen semen to various places in the region after collecting from the good breed bull at present.

Talking to BSS Farm Manager Shafiqul Alam said the farm has been failing to meet the demand of the beneficiaries during the last couple of years due to various constraints it had been facing for long.

To explore the existing reasons of the ineffectiveness of the farm, six Cavalry Battalion of Bangladesh Army conducted an extensive analytical survey and found that the farm had been incurring loss to around Taka 27.5 lakh every year in average during the last two decades consecutively.

Deputy Commanding Officer of the battalion Major Kaiser Ahmed told BSS that the earning of the farm was Taka 20.81 lakh against expenditure of Taka 94.78 lakh in 2005-06 fiscal year.

Major Kaiser said the farm has a huge scope to become a profitable organization through utilizing its existing valuable resources especially the 96 acres of fertile land.

In this context, he said emphasis should be given on undertaking effective steps in the greater interest of bringing dynamism in overall activities of the farm.