The government has taken a massive Boro paddy cultivation programme in the district, popularly known as paddy surplus area, during the current Boro season.
Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) office sources said according to the programme, a total of 1, 85,260 hectares of land would be brought under Boro paddy cultivation with a target of producing 8,02,445 tonnes of the Boro rice.
Of the total land, 1,39,590 hectares of land would be brought under High Yielding Variety (HYV), 45,498 hectares under hybrid variety and 172 hectares under local variety of the paddy.
Now, the Boro cultivators are passing their busy times with transplanting Boro seedlings in their farm lands. Deputy Director of the Netrakona DAE Mohammad Nuruzzaman said that the cultivators have transplanted Boro seedlings on 1,80,800 hectors of land in the district and the transplantation of Boro seedlings in the rest of the targeted land would be completed within a fortnight.
He said the field-workers and crop specialists of the DAE have continued rendering their field-level services and exchanging views with the farmers to let them know about the modern methods of the Boro cultivation for achieving best yielding rate with minimum production cost. By this time, the government has undertaken an agriculture incentive giving program for the small and marginal farmers of the district, he said. "Under the program, the government distributed 330 tonnes of improve quality Boro seeds, 500 tonnes of DAP fertilizer and 500 tonnes of MOP fertilizer among the 90,000 small and marginal Boro cultivators of the district at free of cost", he added.
Apart from this, following the government instructions, different state-run agencies including BADC, BCIC, PDB and REB have already taken many farmers-friendly programs including supplying of improved quality Boro seeds, fertilizers, irrigation machineries to the door-steps of the farmers and ensuring un-interrupted power supply for properly running the irrigation machineries.
Different commercial banks including Bangladesh Krishi bank have started special Boro crops loan disbursing programs for making the Boro cultivators financially capable to accomplish their Boro farming timely and successfully, the deputy director added.