Reza Mahmud :
Tomato enriched with huge nutrients, tomato has enormous prospect for agro based processing industry.
But due to lack of especialised cold storage, necessary policy, logistic support and trained manpower, the huge prospects are going in vain.
The countrymen are being deprived of easy and cheaper nutrition sources as well losing scope of earning foreign currency and opportunity of employment for not having pragmatic initiatives in this regard, sources said.
Entrepreneurs’ said if especialised cold storages could be available, many agro process units can be established and farmers also can store their extra produced tomatos to sell round the year making the country widely benefited.
Md. Asadullah, Director General, of the Department of Agricultural Extension told The New Nation on Wednesday, “About 15 lakh metric tones of tomatos are being produced every year in around 55 thousand hectors of lands.”
The DG said that tomato producing has huge potentials of being financially benefited for both the farmers and the entrepreneurs. He said that not only in traditional farming, the tomato is now producing in commercially established farms in different districts. Sources said, about 36 species of tomatos are usually cultivated in the country in the winter season.
The farmers produce tomato in most districts. Among those most of the vegetable is being cultivated in Bogura, Rajshahi, Rangpur and Cumilla districts.
On the other hand, a rare species of the vegetable being cultivate in the summer has introduced in Bhola district.
Eminent Nutritionist Farah Masuda said, tomato is enriched with vitamins and minerals. “So, it called a protective ingredient for human health,” she said.
The nutrients vegetable has huge demand in the country.
As it is mainly a seasonal agro product, there is growing demand of tomatos of processed items of the vegetable are being found day by day.
Besides the domestic market, there are huge demand of tomatos also in abroad.
Tomato’s processed items like sauce, ketchup and pests are popular among the domestic consumers.
Its markets are getting larger in the country while demand in world market is also high.
The tomato sauce is used to eat with different foods while it also has a large use of taking as food ingredients for cooking different delicious items.
Tomato pests are also used as ingredients to increase tastes in different foods.
When the usefulness of the agro product is lucrative, its farmers are facing loss almost every year due to lack of its preservation facilities in the country.
Farmers from Dhamrai area of Dhaka district said in March, 2021, that many of them faced huge loss due to low price of tomato.
“We have a bumper production of tomato this year, but price is very low which pushed us to incur huge loss,” said Abdullah Ahmed, a farmer of Aralia village of Dhamrai.
He said, “In the early season tomato were sold in Tk 20 to 30 per kg, but in the last time no one want to buy it by Tk 2 per kg.”
He said, farmers from Aralia, Makhulia, Sitipalli, Basona, Khorarchar and other villages also produced tomatos in hundreds acres of land but failed to even realise production costs.
Sources said that it is the common scenario of tomato farmers in most of the year.
Experts said, the farmers usually count loss and the nation deprived of necessary nutrients and financial gains from tomato due to lack of facilities, like especialised cold storages.
When contacted, Md. Iqtadul Hoque, General Secretary of Bangladesh Agro-Processors’ Association told The New Nation on Wednesday, “Especialised cold storage is a must to preserve fresh tomato and its processed items. But there is no especialised cold storage in the country so far.”
He said there are 400 members of their orgaisaiton while only 20 to 30 of those have tomato processing units.
“Only two or three of them have facilities of preserving items in their own cold storage,” the entrepreneur said.
Besides processed items, common people would have a chance to buy fresh tomato round the year if such cold storages can be established, he said.
