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e-Krishok always nearby, always there!
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Ujjal Kumar Biswas is a young farmer from Shalikha in the Magura district. He lives with his extended family of 14 people on their own land. Together they own in excess of 12 bighas of land, on which they farm rice, mustard, bottle gourd, potatoes, aubergines, radish and a variety of spinach. Besides agriculture, Ujjal and his family owns 5 cows, 9 ducks and 15 chickens. These provide milk, eggs and meat for both consumption and sale. Their main cash crop is rice. Ujjal estimates that in the main rice farming season he earns in excess of Tk. 180,000 depending on the price of rice.
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The vegetables that he grows are mainly for the consumption of his large family, and whenever they harvest more than they need, they supplement their income by selling the surplus in the local haat.
Ujjal recently had an agricultural problem. He was growing potatoes this cropping season; everything seemed to be going fine until one day he noticed that many of the potato plants were not growing as much as the other and these plants also were not producing as much potatoes as the other healthy plants. He realized that his some of his potato plants had been attacked by pests. And it seemed that the pests were spreading to the healthier plants. He needed to do something quickly, otherwise he may have a very poor potato harvest this winter; and he would have to buy potatoes from the haat, thereby incurring a cost.
Luckily for Ujjal, he knew the Brand Promoter for the e-Krishok campaign, Shohail. Shohail invited Ujjal to a courtyard meeting at which Ujjal learned that he could use a service called e-Krishok from the Community Information Center. e-Krishok would be able to provide farmers like Ujjal with information and advice whenever they have any problems, question and issues.
So since Ujjal was quite worried over his potato crop, he decided to go see Shohail and describe his problem to him. Shohail then got the solution to Ujjals problem from the online agricultural information repository www.ruralinfobd.com. Shohail informed Ujjal that he needed to use a medicine on his potato crop which would kill the pests. On using the medicine, Ujjal noticed that the pests were killed and that no new attacks are taking place. Ujjal was able to save his potato crop for this winter.
Ujjal is now very happy that the e-Krishok service is available in his area. Before whenever he had such agricultural problems, he was forced to wait for the Sub-Assistant Agricultural Officer (SAAO) for a solution, who was not available all the time as he lived in another village. Another complain that Ujjal had about the SAAO was that the solutions provided by him were not always correct. So now that Ujjal realizes that he can get the correct information and advice from the CIC nearby, he no longer has to wait for the SAAO. In his own words Ujjal says “CIC ta tho shob shomoy ashe kachakachi.”
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