Instead of celebrating bountiful harvests, farmers often suffer when they do not receive fair prices for their vegetables.
Due to a lack of facilities to store excess vegetables, farmers endure significant hardship each season.
Without a developed government system for long-term vegetable storage, farmers are left with no choice but to sell their produce at poor prices and clear their fields.
In response to this issue, the Ministry of Agriculture has initiated a project to bring relief to farmers by installing 'Farmers' Mini Cold Storage' units to preserve their hard-earned produce. This cold storage, known as 'Krishaker Shitol Ghar (Farmer's Cold House)', aims to provide a new direction for agricultural storage.
On Wednesday, Agriculture Advisor Md. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury officially inaugurated two cold storages at the Horticulture Center in Savar.
SM Shahidul Kabir Lipu, an agricultural entrepreneur from Rajendrapur village in Singair, Manikganj, owns a 25-bigha integrated farm. This season, he faced significant losses due to an abundance of unsold vegetables hanging on the plants and wasted in the fields. Upon learning about the government's experimental mini cold storages at the Horticulture Center in Rajalakhe, Savar, Lipu contacted agricultural officials and stored two tons of various vegetables in the cold storage 15 days ago. He hopes to profit by selling these vegetables during the upcoming Ramadan. Several other farmers have also stored various vegetables, including tomatoes, cucumbers, gourds, beetroot, capsicum, brinjal, carrots, and cauliflower, in the cold storage.
When the adviser visited the Horticulture Center in Savar, he found that the vegetables stored 15 days earlier in the 10-ton capacity cold storage remained fresh and unblemished. Typically, vegetables stored in a refrigerator have their skins damaged, but this was not observed in the vegetables stored in this cold storage.
On the same day, the agricultural advisor launched the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council's app 'Khamari'. The app provides data on area-based soil characteristics, economic aspects of crops, weather and climate information, crop suitability, fertiliser recommendations, crop zones, crop layouts, and storage information.
The two mini cold storages were built under the supervision of Talha Jubair Mashrur, project director of the 'Establishment and Development of Tissue Culture Laboratory cum Horticulture Center Project' of the Department of Agricultural Extension. One storage is within the Rajalakh Horticulture Center premises, while the other is container-based and solar-powered, located outdoors.
The main goal of this initiative is to bring farmers' products to the market at the right time through modern cold storage systems.
