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Building Confidence of the Local Farmers through e-Krishok
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Md. Khorshed Alam, is a farmer, who hails from the village of Mamurdhi near Kapasia in Gazipur. He is about 45 years old; he has been farming for the last 20 years. His father, Bashiruddin, was a businessman. He has two brothers and one sister. He married his wife, Asma, around 12 years ago; he now lives with is wife, their daughter and son, his mother and his younger brother. His daughter is in class 3 and his son has just entered into nursery. Khorshed says that he took up farming because he needed something to do, and the only option that was available to him was farming. He inherited half of the land that he now owns from his father and the other half he has added himself over the years, little by little. He usually plants vegetables on half his land and he uses the other half for planting rice paddy.
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Md. Khorshed Alam was having problems with his sweet gourd crop. His sweet gourds started to turn red; they were drying up and started to fall off. And his Jali Kumra crop was infested by small pests, and this was destroying his crop. He decided to go to Akashmela, the local Community Information Center, because he decided to get informed about the problems he was facing with regards to his crops. Khorshed had heard about the e-Krishok agricultural service from the entrepreneur of the CIC, Prince Bhai. He said that before he would go to the place where they sold pesticides, and they would sell him pesticides which would sometimes work and sometimes would not work, so he did not trust them to provide him with the best solution. Besides this, he knew Prince Bhai, and so he felt that he would get the right information from him. Khorshed felt at the time that Prince Bhai would be able to provide him with the correct solution to his problems.
When he went to the CIC, he described his problems to Prince Bhai. Prince Bhai went into the field, and took pictures of the problem. On returning to the CIC, Prince Bhai uploaded the information into the computerized system via the internet and the information was then forwarded to the agricultural specialist. The specialist reviewed the information and then sent a few recommendations the very next day. These recommendations were then forwarded to Khorshed.
For his Jali Kumra, he was recommended to use a pesticide called Melatheon 57 EC. After he used the pesticide, his problem was taken care of; Khorshed claims that over half his crop of Jali Kumra would have been ruined if he had not used the pesticide. When he sold his harvest, he earned over Tk. 5500; so by using the services of e-Krishok, Khorshed increased his earnings by over Tk. 2700.
About the problem with his sweet gourd, he was recommended to use a pesticide called Diathen M45. After using this pesticide, the problem was resolved, and he was able to harvest the remainder of his crop. If he had not used the agricultural services of e-Krishok from the CIC, he would have lost more than half his sweet gourd crop. Having harvested his sweet gourd crop, he sold it for over Tk. 12000. His gain from this is Tk. 6000. His net gain is therefore Tk. 8700 by using the agricultural information services from Akashmela.
Md. Khorshe Alam is very satisfied that he has benefited by using the services of e-Krishok from Akashmela. He is confident that in the future, he will be able to get even more benefit from this new service and he is encouraging the other farmers in his area to use the agricultural services of e-Krishok from Akashmela. As for himself, with his increased profits, he intends to buy another cow in the near future as soon as he is able to afford it.
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