Tobacco grabs huge paddy lands in Lalmonirhat

NGO News Report :: “The agriculture department always record only 35 to 40 percent of the total tobacco farming land in order to avoid high official’s notice, said an AED official in Lalmonirhat who wishes to remain anonymous” following a report on Daily Star on January 21, 2015 by S Dilip Roy, an ATMA member.

Tobacco farming has alarmingly increased in the Lalmonirhat district. It was grown on 23 thousand acres of lands in five Upazillas of the district in the last season and the lands for the same purpose would be much more this year, mentions the report.

The tobacco industry targeted huge paddy land for farming tobacco in this area. A number of tobacco farmers realized this ill tactics by the industries and organized rally to demand for alternative crops instead of tobacco farming in order to save their land’s fertility, their health and environment.

Day by day the district of Lalmonirhat is losing paddy land as tobacco is being cultivated instead. Therefore, it is highly imperative to formulate and implement a comprehensive tobacco cultivation policy to check tobacco cultivation in Bangladesh to prevent the upcoming land scarcity for cultivating food and cash crops.

See the detail report:
​http://www.thedailystar.net/how-profitable-is-tobacco-farming-60939