Stories
Kaiyum, a 43-year-old farmer from Panchbibi sub-district in Joypurhat, traditionally reared livestock animals and earned 10,000 takas each month. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he had to sell his animals to meet his family’s financial needs. Subsequently, he leased 100 decimals of agricultural land to produce vegetables. Unfortunately, he found that there was a lack of quality vegetable seedlings in his area. To address this problem, he decided to produce high-quality seedlings himself and supply them to local farmers to increase their production.
Fortunately, the RMTP project introduced Kaiyum to the “Pro Tray Nursery Seedling” technique, which is part of the “Eco-friendly safe vegetable cultivation and marketing” sub-project. The project provided him with capacity building training, technical support, coco media, 250 reusable plastic trays, quality seeds, mulching papers, green netting, and other resources.
Kaiyum invested 40,000 takas of his own money into the venture. The project also assisted him in marketing his seedlings to farmers through various meetings. Within 25 days, Kaiyum sold 25,000 seedlings in the first round of production. He then purchased an additional 100 plastic trays to expand seedling production for the second round, during which he sold 32,000 seedlings.
He now produces various types of seedlings in his nursery, including green chilli, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant, cabbage, cucumber, tomato, bottle gourd, pumpkin, capsicum, papaya, and bean. Currently, there are 97,500 seedlings in his nursery, and he is taking advance orders from farmers for their supply.
He now earns 30,000 takas each month, and three women work in his farm and are also learning this modern technology. Kaiyum’s wife, Emroja, directly manages the nursery and has increased her efficiency in this regard. Due to the high demand for pro tray seedlings in his area, Kaiyum plans to expand his business and has set a target of producing 100,000 seedlings in each cycle.
One farmer, Md. Hasan Ali Bakul, said, “I have used Kaiyum’s nursery’s seedlings, which are of good quality and have increased my vegetable production.”
