Boro farming is going on in full swing in Sylhet region.
A good number of farmers will continue the paddy cultivation till mid-March, an official said, adding, there is a possibility to exceed the target set for Boro production this season.
The DAE has set Boro farming target on 475, 389 hectares of land in the division. However, the crop has so far been cultivated on about 462,125 hectares in all the four districts. It includes 82,610 hectares of hybrid, 363,565 hectares of high yielding varieties and 15,950 hectares of local varieties.
DAE officials said the cold wave had affected the seedbed preparation on some areas as the farmers couldn't work on the field for longer time whereas they needed to work for hours to preparing the Boro seedbeds, said Habibur Rahman Derai upazila in Sunamganj.
An official said the farmers had been a little behind in cultivating the main crop due to the late recession of waters from the croplands inside the different haors in Sunamganj.
Besdies, the Water Development Board (WDB) couldn't start reconstruction of the crop protection embankments in many haor areas in time. However, things got a change in the last two weeks, a number of farmers and officials informed.
Additional Director, DAE Sylhet division Md. Altabur Rahman said this time the target would surpassed since new areas came under cultivation and the farmers now trying to get highest yield since they had suffered devastating crop loss last year.
With the last year's Boro crop almost totally destroyed by the repeated and early floods and excess rains coupled with rolling down of waters from the upstream in the Indian states of Meghalaya and Assam, they are doing hard this year.
With a target to recouping that losses the government this year provided assistance in seed, fertiliser and cash to over 40,5000 listed poor and marginal farmers this year in Sylhet division. Of them highest 300,000 was in Sunamganj.
Meanwhile, BSS adds: In Natrakona, cultivation of the high-yielding crop has been going on in full swing in all the 10 upazilas, which is widely known as 'grain vowel' of the country.
The Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) office sources said the cultivators have already brought 1, 81,500 hectares of land under the cultivation in the district exceeding the target fixed at 1,81,238 hectares.
Of the total land, the farmers cultivated hybrid variety of paddy on 13,065 hectares of land, high yielding variety (HYV) on 1,67,978 hectares of land and local variety of the paddy on 457 hectares of land.
Deputy director of DAE Bilash Chandra Paul said the cultivation of Boro is progressing fast in the district as the cultivators were provided with financial and logistic support by the government.
He said, following the instructions of the government, different state-run agencies including BADC and BCIC have taken different farmers-friendly programs to ensure proper supplying of improved quality Boro seeds, fertilizers and other agricultural equipments to the door steps of the farmers.
Besides, different commercial banks including Bangladesh Krishi Bank have already disbursed agricultural loans among the farmers to make them capable to run their cultivation cost.
The Bangladesh Power Development Board (PDB) and Rural Electrification Board (REB) ensured uninterrupted supply of electricity to keep their irrigation machineries operative round the clock, he informed.
Besides, the crops specialists and field-workers of the DAE continued rendering their field-level service to let the farmers know about the modern methods of Boro cultivation and methods of reducing the production costs, the deputy director added.