Bitter Gourd and knowledge, Sweetness in Kusuma’s Life!

Kusuma is harvesting Bitter Gourd from her field

Ms. Kusuma Khatun and her husband Kubbat Ali, from Dkkhin Poravita Village, in Dewangang, Jamalpur, accomplished success by cultivating seasonal vegetables. The farmer couple set an example of vegetable farming by cultivating Bitter gourd, Brinjal, Okra and Jute leaf on 0.30 acre of their own land with the support and technical knowledge received from local service provider (LSP) Md. Zahidul Islam who has been trained in vegetable cultivation under the Cross-border project.
Kusuma is a member of a vegetable cultivation group, which received training on vegetable cultivation and marketing and additional support of quality vegetable seeds and BDT1000 (BDT 80 = USD 1) as working capital to buy good inputs. She and her husband decided to work together in their vegetable field. They started cultivating vegetables in February 2013 and their first harvest took place in April 2013. "We have cultivated vegetable before, but never harvested much. Most of our production we used for family consumption. This year we were well prepared and followed all the instruction properly given by LSP Md. Zahidul Islam. We used quality inputs and you can see the difference between our field and the field of our neighbors. We learned that there is a strong link between quality inputs like seed, irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides, and technical knowledge about vegetable cultivation and the harvest and marketing. We never realized this link before." explained Kusuma.

From April to June 2013, Kusuma sold:
160 kg Brinjal (BDT10/kg)           BDT    1,600
1200 kg Bitter gourd (BDT10/kg)  BDT   12,000
Jute leaf                                    BDT     1,500
400 kg Okra (BDT5/kg)               BDT     2,000
Total sale of production               BDT   17,100
Total costs of production             BDT     9,520
Income                                    BDT     7,580

From April to June 2013 the couple earned BDT 7580, despite the lower production of Okra and Brinjal. The cultivation period was full with challenges for the farmer couple. Their Brinjal seed was not good and they got a virus infestation in the Okra. “There was a problem in our Brinjal seed and we had a virus infestation in the Okra field. We contacted the vegetable LSP Zahidul Islam. He tried his level best but could not sort out the problem, but he has contacts with the agricultural expert of the local government office. So we visited this agriculture expert. He explained us about the virus infection, but it was already too late for treatment. We have learned important things from this season, for example the timing of applying pesticides, fertilizer and water. And we have the technical support from the LSP and if we have a big problem we will go much earlier to the government expert to ask for advice. This will help us to improve and harvest more the coming winter season.” said Kubbat.