Dredged canals facilitate cropping at Santhia

SANTHIA, PABNA, Oct 1: Agriculture scenario and farmers' living standard have changed in Santhia Upazila of the district after dredging two canals- Behula Beel and Bannegara Beel.
Earlier about 450 hectares of agriculture land in the beel would remain under water for the whole year.
Huge croplands along canal banks in six villages would remain water-logged in the dry season.
For more than one era, about 4,000 people in ten villages including Rawti, Dhulauri, Choubaria, Gopinathpur and Bhulbaria suffered disarray.
A visit found jute growers were cutting jute and retting in the canal water.
Agriculture office sources said, farmers have started to get benefits of the dredged canal.  Irrigation facility has already been created; now farmers can cultivate paddy, wheat, onion, garlic and Rabi crops in Behula Beel and Bannegara Beel; the farming cost will come down with reduced fuel use; also the pressure on groundwater will decrease.
According to sources at Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation (BADC), about six kilometre canal stretches have been dredged by the BADC under Pabna-Natore-Sirajganj Irrigation Development project at about Tk 51 lakh.
Farmer Elahi Munsi of Paiksha Village said, "We couldn't cultivate hundreds of bighas of land before. Lands would remain blanketed with water hyacinth. Only 1-2 bighas could be farmed, but our farming costs would go up for high irrigation costs in the dry season. Now our tension for irrigation in the dry season has decreased a little."
"We are now running our families well by farming," he added.
Santhia Upazila Agriculture Officer Sanjib Kumar Gowsami said, two facilities have been created after dredging the canal - available irrigation water and rapid recession of stranded water; two-cropping lands have been three-cropping; uncultivated lands are brought under cultivation; new crops are farmed.
Director of the dredging project A.B.M Mahmud Hasan Khan said, about 1.500 ha lands of Behula and Bannegara beels have been freed of stagnation while 600 ha one-cropping lands will be turned into two-three-cropping ones; using low lift pump, the irrigation can be made from the canal water.