By Md Aynal Haque

RAJSHAHI, Feb 9, 2025 (BSS)- Various types of modern farming technologies are 
being promoted among the grassroots farmers aimed at boosting crop production 
in the region, including its vast Barind tract.

In addition to expansion of the technologies, the farmers are being imparted 
practical training so that they can be familiarized with the technologies and 
derive total benefits of those.

On behalf of its "Farm Machinery Technology Development for Profitable Crop 
Production (FMDP) project", Farm Machinery and Postharvest Process 
Engineering (FMPE) Division of Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute 
(BARI) has been promoting the technologies.

Talking to BSS here, FMPE Senior Scientific Officer Dr Arshadul Hoque said 
substantial promotion of modern farm machinery can be the crucial means of 
making the agricultural products more profitable coupled with making the 
farmers happy.

To attain the cherished goal, the grassroots farmers are gradually being 
habituated and accustomed to the need-based machinery and technologies 
through diversified interventions so that they can derive total benefits out 
of it.

Dr Arshadul Hoque said farmers in the area are gradually being habituated to 
cost-effective and mechanized farming and harvesting.
 
Large-scale promotion of mechanization could be the effective means of 
mitigating the problems of labour shortage, slow pace and high expensive 
potato harvesting.
 
There is a huge labour shortage in the potato growing area during peak 
harvesting period. Manual potato harvesting is a slow, time consuming and 
costly operation.
 
"Mechanized potato harvester saves cost and time besides mitigating labour 
shortage," Dr Arshadul said, adding that FMPE Division has developed the 
power tiller driven potato harvester.
 
He said more area coverage within a short period of time, reducing labour 
dependency, escaping bad weather and quick potato harvesting, cost reduction 
by 60 percent and profitable potato production are the major salient features 
of the harvester.
 
"Potato harvesters meet up the labour shortage through speeding up the 
harvesting process. It can harvest potatoes from around 10-12 bighas of land 
on average a day depending upon the operator's skill," Dr Hoque further said.

Senior Scientific Officer of On-Farm Research Division (Barind Centre) Dr 
Shakhawat Hossain told BSS that BARI has innovated 55 types of farming 
machinery and expanded eight of those to the farmers at subsidized prices in 
the region.

The farmers who are getting the machineries are being brought under practical 
training in phases so that they are skilled in handling those effectively.
 
Dr Hossain said many of the farmers are being benefited after the best use of 
the BARI seeder machine in seeding wheat, mustard and maize enormously.

Illustrating the aspects of successful promotion of farm machinery in terms 
of yielding more crops, he said BARI has also invented a machine to extract 
oil from mustard and it has been working relentlessly for enhancing its use.

"We are conducting programmes for generating drivers and mechanics through 
need-based training regularly for making the innovative farming machines 
popular among the targeted people," he added.