USAID project to assist potato farmers in Bangladesh

In the North of Bangladesh, USAID has started to assist potato farmers, workforce and entrepreneurs by launching a five year term (2009-2013) project entitled PRICE (Poverty Reduction by Increasing Competitiveness of Enterprises).

This project will jointly work with established local agro enterprises by signing memorandum of understanding (MOU).

PRICE's chief of party Jules Lampell and Md Salim, chairman of a local enterprise 'Ankur Seed and Himagar Ltd', situated at Chander of the district, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) recently to work together in this regard. This MOU is the first of its kind in this region aiming to assist potato sector.

'Ankur Seed and Himagar Ltd' is the largest seed cold storage in this region comprising eight districts in Rangpur division with preservation capacity of 15,000 metric tones (MT) of potatoes. It has a target to cultivate seed potato in 400 acres (1 acre = 100 decimal) of contract land this year.

Dr Syed A B Siddiqui, a team leader of PRICE informed that the project will take effort with partner local enterprise for establishing a healthy contract farming system among potato farmers.

He also said that it will provide support to train contracted farmers, workforce and staff members on improvised production techniques for producing potato seeds and table potato (used for consumption), fascilitate in establishing linkage with seed certification agency and also to set up demonstration plots and provide support in conducting field days for potato farmers.

PRICE's business advisor Md Abdul Mannan Sarker informed that they will also provide support to establish a national and international potato marketing network for farmers and partner enterprise.

The project will help capacity building for potato farmers in sorting, grading and packaging and explore possibility to facilitate improvement of cold storage operation for better storage of seed and table potato, he added.

Md Salim, chairman of 'Ankur Seed and Himagar Ltd' said that as per MOU, the project PRICE will provide technical support and information to them to establish an up to date tissue culture laboratory.

PRICE sources said that the overall mission of the project is to reduce poverty by increasing the competitiveness in three sectors like aquaculture, horticulture and leather sector of the country. For potato producing region like Rangpur division, the project promotes horticulture.

High yield of potato brings price down

Harvesting of early variety potato is going on in full swing in Nilphamari district. As a result price of potato in the retail markets has come down drastically.

Market sources said at present local variety potato is being sold at 400 taka per maund (40 Kg) and HYV potato in 350 taka per maund. Sources said the price of this useful vegetable is supposed to drop again as plenty of seasonal potatoes would come to the market very soon.

Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) sources said, this years target of potato cultivation was in 22,671 hectares of land and production target was 39,6743 metric tonnes. As conducive climate prevailed throughout the season for potato farming the production target of potato is expected to exceed the target, DAE sources observed.