RAJSHAHI, Earned capacity and indigenous knowledge of the grassroots farmers need to be recognized for sustainable and eco-friendly agriculture.
Simultaneously, importance should be given to farmers' interests in production and preservation of paddy seeds.
Many of the farmers are now seen selecting different indigenous paddy varieties, including Talmugur, Swarna Mashury and Swarna Rota, from their respective research plots as part of their selection of paddy diversification.
The varieties are suitable for the drought-prone Barind area as those are drought-tolerant and less-water consuming.
Agricultural experts and development activists made the observation while addressing a farmers' field day at Tetulia Danga village under Paba upazila in the district today.
Bangladesh Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge (BARCIK) organized the meeting on the occasion of selecting 14 local varieties of paddy by farmers.
Sharing his views farmer Sohel Rana 45, said he got around 16-17 mounds of paddy yield from per bigha of land without using any chemical fertilizer and pesticides.
Sub Assistant Agriculture Officers Shariful Islam and Abdur Razzaque, school teacher Mojibur Rahman and BARCIK Regional Coordinator Shahidul Islam addressed the meeting.
Shahidul Islam says legitimate rights of the farmers and others concerned should be protected rightly for the sake of encouraging them to boost agricultural production to meet its gradually mounting demands.
He referred to their enormous contribution to the country's agricultural development and said the farmers deserve the right to get all requisite privileges. There is no alternative to protect their interests as a whole.
Large-scale promotion of less-water-consuming indigenous crops could be an effective means of mitigating water-stress conditions in the drought-prone Barind area.
Narrating the sufferings caused by the abnormal lowering of groundwater farmer Sohel Rana mentioned that there are enormous scopes of increasing the acreage of various low-water consuming crops in the Barind tract.
He mentioned that the ongoing climate change at alarming rates has severely affected indigenous crop farming and its diversity creating a real threat to food production.
