For last several years summer has been a happy time for villagers of Joynagar in Pabna for making good earnings from selling litchi.
There are at least 15,000 litchi trees in this village under Iswardi upazila in Pabna, estimated Khalilur Rahman, the upazila agricultural officer of the Department of Agricultural Extension.
Traders, mainly from Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet have flocked to the village to buy the produce.
Nasir Uddin of the village earned about Tk 6 lakh this year from his 120 trees while Abdur Rahim, assistant teacher at Bansherbandaha Government Primary School, made about Tk 65,000 from his single litchi tree.
The inhabitants of the village have given credit to the schoolteacher Abdul Gafur, who planted a litchi sapling in his yard many years back and got very good yields when the plant grew up. His neighbours, being enthusiastic by his success, followed his example, thus litchi plantation had gradually spread in the village.
But there is no big litchi garden in the densely populated village due to scarcity of land. People have grown their litchi trees in the manner of homestead gardening. There is hardly any home now in the village without a couple of litchi trees in its courtyard.
According to the DAE, Joynagar villagers grow some local varieties and two hybrid varieties, namely China and Bombai.
The local variety litchi is smaller in size, has less flesh and bigger seed compared to that of the hybrid ones.
The villagers said that as the local varieties of litchi plants needed less care and grew in less fertile soil, many people preferred these for plantation where the soil was not very good.
This year the produce is selling at Tk 200 for per hundred litchis to the wholesalers.
'We could get a better price if the road was better,' said Kuddus Miah, owner of 32 litchi trees. 'The only road that leads from the highway to the village is muddy, making the road unfit for trucks or pickups,' he also said.
The proceeds from the litchi is effecting gradual change to the life of the village enabling its inhabitants to take up other income generating initiatives such as rearing small poultry and cattle farms.
Source: New Age
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