Beneficiary: Ful Kumar Chakma
[Agricultural program] A successful entrepreneur by using microcredit
Ful Kumar Chakma, s/o Ananda Kumar Chakma is a 52-year old hard working farmer from Chakma Palli of Rangamati Sadar upazila of Rangamati district. He has a family of 5 members husband, wife and 3 children. The 1st son, Gulmani, 28 helps his father in farming. The 2nd son, Rupayan, 18 has already passed the HSC. The third one is a daughter, Laxmi Sona, 16 and a student of final year HSC. They own a small hill. The whole family lives in a small tin-shed house with bamboo-fencing around, located on the top of the hill.
His annual income and expenditure from farming are almost balanced. Though most of the chakma families do not have the habit of savings, Ful Kumar tries to save about Tk. 10-20 thousand a year out of his total annual income of Tk. one lac from hill farming including mango orchard.
Ful Kumar Chakma has established, on the hill slope, a small orchard of about 100 Amrapali mango plants. He told that his mango plants flowered profusely but fruiting was negligible due to attacks of hoppers and borers.
Mrs. Motri Chakma, Executive Director of the Partner NGO, Development Concern (Ramghar, Rangamati) came to know about his problem. Ful Kumar was selected and facilitated by the NGO partner to adopt the technology, ‘Mango Hoppers and Borer Control’ in his small mango orchard. He followed the ATTP guidelines and the NGO partners instructions in replicating the technology during the 1st cycle of implementation of ATTP. He sprayed the recommended pesticides with appropriate dozes 2 times, one full coverage spraying just before flowering started and the 2nd one after the marbel-sized fruits formed. The technology demonstration performance was rated excellent during 1st cycle of flowering and fruiting in 2010 under close supervision of both ATTP and NGO personnel.
After application of the technology in 2010 season, all his 100 mango plants in the orchard produced 4500 fruits whose total weight was about 1,000 kg. But the year before application of the technology, all his 100 mango plants produced 505 mangoes only whose weight was only 95 kg. The results demonstrated about 9 times increase in fruiting and 10.50 times increase in mango production due to application of the technology. The net profit earned, after deducting cost of production was about Tk. 20,000/-. He sold Amropali mango@ Tk. 29 per kg in the local market.
Ful Kumar Chakma was very happy to see his mango orchard flowering and fruiting. The profit of Tk. 20,000 out of sales of 1,000 kg mango after consumption by the family members brought smile and happiness as he earned almost nothing from the orchard before application of the technology. The NGO partner did not support Chakma in 2011. But he replicated the technology at his own initiative. He bought a sprayer at Tk.22,000 and his son sprayed the mango orchard in time. Though most of the mango orchard in the hill areas did not fruit heavily this season (2011) due to continuous drought prevailed before flowering but most of the mango plants in his orchard produced fruits that season. Such fruiting encouraged Chakma to request all his neighbours around to apply the technology together so as to cover greater areas and get full impact of the technology.