Photo : Collected
Forty-nine-year-old Rahela became helpless when her husband, lone bread earner of the family, faced a fatal road accident leaving him paralyzed in 2014.
She was thinking what to do for maintaining the six-member family as they sold out their land property for mitigating the expenses of her husband’s treatment.
One day, a field officer of a local NGO visited her house. Rahela told her about the situation. The officer suggested her to do something like lemon farming in high land areas as many get success in lemon farming in Monohardi, Belabo, Shibpur and Raipura upazilas of the Narsingdi district in the last ten years.
After taking some training from the NGO, Rahela started lemon farming in Belabo upazila. In the beginning, she took lease some land for two years from a local farmer. She started small scale lemon farming on experimental basis.
The Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) took a programme in 2012 to make farmers interested in cultivating export-quality lemon in four upazilas of the district as weather and soil of the district found suitable for Colombo Lemon cultivation.
Under the programme, a total of 50 new orchards of Colombo Lemon (each orchard spread one bigha) were set up in the four upazilas of the district.
The DAE supplied 160 sapling of Colombo Lemon to each grower and imparted them training on producing quality lemon.
Besides, some farmers in different areas of the district raised a number of orchards by their own initiative and they are, at present, harvesting good quality lemon from their orchards.
According to DAE Narsingdi, farmers in four upazilas currently are cultivating Colombo Lemon in 2,200 orchards on 480 hectares of land. This year, they have so far produced over 5,200 tonnes of lemon in the district.
Rahela said she succeeded in Colombo Lemon cultivation and gradually raised a garden by planting 1000 saplings on 150 decimals of land. This year, she got an excellent outcome from his garden.
She expressed satisfaction for earning so far Taka 3,00,000 from lemon selling this season. Like Rahela many women of these upazila are cultivating Colombo Lemon.
DAE official said Colombo Lemon has great demand in the local and neighborhood markets as it is being exported abroad specially European and Middle Eastern countries.
April, May and June are the best time for harvesting Colombo Lemon. This year Narsingdi district will export over 2,000 metric tons of Calombo Lemon abroad, official said, adding lemon cultivation helped many women in the district to achieve their financial empowerment.
Messenger/Mumu
