Farmers protest at low rice price

Low price of rice has left farmers in the country frustrated and with no immediate solution in sight a farmer in Tangail on Sunday set fire to his Boro paddy field.
Another of his fellow farmer offered half of his harvest to those who would help him reap his paddy as he could not afford labourers.
Following a bumper harvest in the Boro season, farmers find themselves at their tether’s end in Tangail, where the cost of hiring a labourer now stands at Tk 850 a day while a maund of rice sells only for Tk 500.
‘We are already dead,’ said Abdul Malek Shikder, a farmer in Kalihati, in despair.
In the afternoon, Shikder poured petrol onto his paddy field and set it afire to the astonishment of his colleagues and locals.
The news spread like fire on the social media as it was shared by Facebookers over and over again. 
The posts suggest that farmers’ woes have been a cause for concern besides highlighting the fact that theirs have been a life of precariousness. It has been long since they could see some profit from cultivating rice. 
Though Shikder’s fellows rushed to put out the fire, they, however, realised that they also needed to draw attention to their situation. Crop burning, perhaps, was one way of drawing attention to the low price.
Paikora Union Parishad Chairman Azad Hossain said that it was a painful incident to see a farmer burn his own crop.
‘Gains in various sectors of a country will have no meaning when its farmers suffer losses even after having a bumper crop,’ Azad lamented.
Another Kalihati farmer, Mizanur Rahman Manzu, offered half of his harvest to the villagers who helped him to reap his crop.
‘Labour price is twice as much the price of a maund of rice. I cannot afford to hire labourers to harvest my crop,’ said Mizan.
At Mirzapur, another upazila in Tangail, labourers are charging up to Tk 1,000 per head for a day’s work.
Farmer Rakibul Islam said that production of a maund rice cost them Tk 1,000 while in was highly unlikely that the price of rice would earn him such a high amount.
At Elenga in Tangail, labourers were charging Tk 9,00 for a day’s work excluding their cost of food. 
Kalihati upazila agriculture officer AM Shahidul Islam said that farmers were losing up to Tk 3,000 for cultivating rice per bigha which cost them around Tk 14,000.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net