|
e-Krishok Helps to Save String Beans
|
|
Md. Faruk Hossain is a young farmer. At only 25 years old, he is one of the very few young independent farmers in his locality of Chougacha. He inherited nearly 6 bighas of land from his father 2 years ago. On his agricultural land, Faruk grows rice, bottle gourd, sweet pumpkin, aubergines, lady fingers, bitter gourd, spinach and a variety of other vegetables. Besides agriculture, Faruk owns 2 cows which provide milk for his family, 2 goats, 5 ducks and numerous chickens.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Faruk estimates that his total yearly income from all of his income generating activities earns him about Tk. 120,000 on a yearly basis. Life is good for a young farmer like Faruk. He makes a good living from farming; though there are also a lot of problems involved with farming.
Recently he had a problem with his string bean crop. The plants would flower, but then the flower would rot and fall off before the beans could sprout. He had invested over Tk. 12,000 on his string bean crop and it was probable that he would lose his entire crop due to this problem.
At this stressful time for Faruk, he came to know of the e-Krishok campaign from the court yard meetings held by the Brand Promoter for the campaign in the area, Shankar. From Shankar, Faruk heard that he could get solutions for all his farming related problems in a timely manner. As he knew Shankar and trusted him, Faruk decided to use the service. Faruk went to the Community Information Center and spoke with Shankar describing his problem. Shankar looked up the problem on e-Krishoks online database and then provided the solution to Faruk the next day.
Faruk was informed that he needed to use a medicine on his string bean crop which would stop the flowers from rotting. After using the medicine for a week, Faruk noticed that the rotting had stopped and that it was no longer spreading. As a result, Faruk was able to harvest nearly 60% of his crop. Faruk was able to sell this harvest for nearly Tk. 15,000, thereby profiting by Tk. 3,000. Faruk says that if he had known about e-Krishok earlier, then he would have saved more of his crop and also earned more. Even so, he is happy with what he has earned this time around because he felt that he would have made a loss, had it no been for the intervention of e-Krishok.
|
|
|
|
|