DOT Desk: Up to 30 per cent of mangoes produced in the country get wasted before reaching the market in absence of facilities to store and transport them properly, said growers and exporters at a discussion, reports The New Age.
They demanded that the government should build chilling and packaging centres in all the districts known for producing mangoes.
‘Growers are losing interest in mango production fast so, the government must act fast,’ said Shafiqul Islam Sana, a farmer from Rajshahi.
Sana and farmers from mango producing districts like Satkhira participated in the discussion on market promotion of safe mango.
Jointly organised by the Department of Agricultural Extension and Solidaridad, a non government organisation, the discussion was also attended by government horticulturists and researchers.
Sana said that mango growers were barely surviving as their produces over the years failed to fetch even its production cost.
Sana produces mango mainly for export. Last year he produced 200 tonnes but could sell only 26 tonnes in the foreign market.
He was waiting for exporters to arrive in time to buy from him. But they did not.
And Sana could not sell mangoes in the domestic market as they were already ripe and he did not have access to chilling centre for preserving his produces.
Solidaridad’s supply chain and business development senior manager Mohammad Moziball Hoque in his keynote paper assessed that Bangladesh’s mangoes have domestic and global markets worth Tk 12,000 crore.
‘There is scope for increasing the markets manifold,’ said Mozib.
According to him, the European Union imported from developing countries mango worth $737 million in 2016.
Bangladesh stopped exporting mangoes to EU market in 2015 after it was found harmful to health in tests in the EU for contamination.
In 2018, Bangladesh exported a little over 220 tonnes, including 100 tonnes to EU market. Bangladesh produced more than 22 lakh tonnes of mangoes last year.
Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute’s principal scientific officer Babul Chandra Sarker said that incidents of contamination could easily be avoided by properly processing mangoes.
He said that cold chain was crucial to mango export.
‘The temperature needs to be maintained below 16 degrees Celsius throughout the cold chain,’ said Babul.
Agriculture ministry additional secretary Sanat Kumar Saha said, ‘farmers should move away from producing crops that do not earn them enough.’
‘We are aiming to move to commercial farming and farmers’ benefit is central to it,’ said Sanat.
DAE’s director general Amitav Das, DAE plant protection wing director Mir Nurul Alam, Solidaridad Network Asia country manager Selim Reza Hasan, and FBCCI director SM Jahangir Hossain also attended the discussion at Khamarbari.
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