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Changing Lives: Md. Selim Reza and the e-Krishok Campaign
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After finishing his breakfast, Md. Selim Reza goes off to work in his fields. This is what he has been doing for the past 8 years. Life is slow in his village of Dohakula, so he takes it easy on the way to his fields. This cropping season he is farming only rice and sugar cane; so after visiting his paddy field he heads off to his sugar cane field. It takes him about 10 minutes. The morning wind is bracing; sharp in the lungs. He gets to his sugar cane field. The wind in his lungs is quickly expelled. His breath quickens. His sugar crop has been attacked by pests. The pests are eating away at the stem of the plants and are causing the plants to die. He looks frantically from one plant to the next; a lot of the plants have been infected. What was he going to do now?
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Md. Selim Reza, 27 years of age, lives in a small village called Dohakula in the Sharsha union, of Jessore Division. He lives on his homestead with his wife, two brothers and parents. In all, his family owns about an acre of land and they also rent nearly 1 bigha for farming as well. Besides sugar cane, Md. Selim Reza farms rice, wheat and an assortment of vegetables such as egg plant, spinach, bottle gourd, and string beans. Md. Selim Reza says that the life of a farmer is a good life; but that when a farmer faces trouble he has difficulties. Most of the time the Sub-Assistant Agricultural Officer (SAAO) is not available, at other times the solutions provided by the SAAO do not work. A farmer also has to go to fertilizer and pesticide agents for solutions, but their solutions are not reliable; Md. Selim Reza claims that the agents are interested in pushing the medicines that they have, and not what is needed for a specific solution. And this was why he visited the local Community Information Center (CIC) is search of a solution to the disease afflicting his sugar cane.
He had heard in the courtyard meeting organized by the Brand Promoter at the CIC that farmers would be able to get solutions to their problems from the CIC through something known as e-Krishok. He was not absolutely sure how a CIC would be able to help farmers with their problems, but he kept it in his mind. And now he was able to use the agricultural informational and advisory services of e-Krishok.
Through the e-Krishok service, Md. Selim Reza was informed that he needed to use a medicine on his sugar cane. He had to use it twice, once per week; this would take care of his problem. He did as he was instructed to. In the third week Md. Selim Reza noticed after the first week that the disease was beginning to die down. It was not spreading any more and those plants which were struck down with the disease were starting to get better. This encouraged him to continue with the treatme
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