UNB, Gaibandha :
Belal Hossain has been a successful vegetable farmer earning enough for his five-member family.
This year Belal added a new vegetable: red cabbage, a novelty in this northern distruct. And profitable too.
Due to its newness and taste red cabbage has quickly become a popular veg used as salad and for making other curry.
Belal soon has found that this new crop is profitable both in yield and price.
He sells red cabbage per piece at price ranging from Tk30 to Tk40. He is expecting a profit of Tk 2 lakh from this yield, he said.
Belal is from Basharapara of Kanchipara union Gaibandha’s Fulchhari upazila. He has a family of five including two daughters. He has a little land of his own so he cultivates on others’ lands too on hire basis.
The whole family works at the fields which saves money paid as wages for the workers. Belal said, “I work on the fields; my wife Shilpi Begum, daughter Cynthi Akhter, Bonya Begum and son Sihab Ali- work on the fields too. When the time comes, girls go to college. They work on the field again as they return.”
He cultivates vegetables including cauliflower, cabbage, eggplant, chilli, potato, tomato, gourd, bean capsicum, sweet pumpkin at different times of the year and earns at least Tk 2 lakh every year. He has built a house and is sending his daughters to college.
Belal always wants to cultivate something new and different so he looks for variety of seeds whenever he goes to Dhaka. That’s how he came across Lalima or red cabbage, a variety coming from Japan.
So he added the nice looking crop to his vegetable garden hoping to earn more money.
Belal’s entreprising spirit has earned praises from his co-villagers.
Akbar Hossain, former chairman of Kanchipara Union, said red cabbage had never been seen in Gaibandha before. When the seedlings grew, Belal planted 10,000 seedlings. In a short time red cabbages grew all over the lands. People come from far and wide to see the red cabbages.
Habibur Rahman, a freedom fighter from Bahasarapara village, said Belal harvests 13 crops in 12 months. He earns up to Tk 2,000 selling red cabbages almost every day.
Belal hopes to earn at Tk 2 lakh selling these red cabbages above the production cost.
His wife and he plan to save the money for their elder daughter’s wedding.
