Mango orchard leasing and trading

About the business

Owning an orchard is one thing; taking someone else's orchard for a season is a different business altogether. The trees are not yours, the land is not yours - you are buying one season's fruit, and how that fruit turns out is not settled when you sign. That is the gamble. Take a real set of numbers. At Sokhipur in Tangail three young men leased a 4.5-acre Gourmoti orchard of 1,200 trees for ten years, on terms that pay the owner Tk 1,000,000 every year - about Tk 833 per tree per year, or roughly Tk 222,000 an acre. That season their own spending, bagging included, came to about another Tk 2,000,000. Selling wholesale from the orchard at Tk 7,700 a maund, they expected Tk 2,000,000 profit after costs. But not every mango is a Gourmoti. On 15 May 2026, opening day at Baneshwar bazar in Rajshahi, tree-ripened guti mango fetched just Tk 1,320 a maund and most of it went to pickle factories. Tk 7,700 against Tk 1,320 - the whole of profit and loss sits between those two prices for the same crop. And one thing nobody mentions: in Joypurhat the wholesalers buy from households at 45 kilos to the maund and sell to shops at 40 kilos to the maund, so five kilos in every maund is gone on the scale before a single mango has spoiled.

Unit economics

What you need to start

• Fruit bagging bags, pesticide and spraying materials, and crates for carrying the fruit. Bagging adds about Tk 100,000 per acre.Starting stock
• Trade licence from the union parishad, municipality or city corporation: form Tk 10, licence book Tk 50, standard tax Tk 30, non-judicial stamp Tk 150-300, licence fee Tk 100-60,000 by trade type. This is a buy-and-sell trade, so it is required.Licence
• A lease deed with the orchard owner on non-judicial stamp paper. Term, annual payment, payment dates and what happens if the crop fails should all be written in. The Sokhipur precedent is a ten-year contract at Tk 1,000,000 a year.Licence
• Judging a season's yield from the standing trees - the whole business rests on it, because the lease price is fixed before the fruit exists. Then pruning, protecting the flowering, timing the sprays and bagging.Skill
• Permanent year-round labour (four at the Sokhipur orchard), and on the selling side the orchard wholesaler, an aratdar at Baneshwar or Akkelpur, and pickle-factory buyers.Supplier
• The leased orchard is the workplace. The Sokhipur precedent is 1,200 mango trees on 4.5 acres. Tree count and variety set the price, not the area of land.Workspace

How the work is done

1. 1Go looking for an orchard in September-October, long before flowering. That is when owners start thinking about leasing the coming season and the asking price is still lower.
2. 2Count the trees, write down the variety and find out their age. The price is set by tree count and variety - the 4.5-acre Sokhipur orchard held 1,200 trees at Tk 1,000,000 a year, about Tk 833 a tree.
3. 3Find out how many maunds came off that orchard in the last two or three years, asking the owner and the neighbours separately. Setting your price on the owner's word alone is the surest way to be cheated.
4. 4Put the agreement in writing - how many years, how much a year, on what dates, and what happens if the crop fails. The Sokhipur contract runs ten years at Tk 1,000,000 a year. Execute it on non-judicial stamp paper.
5. 5Start work in November. Prune the old panicles and branches, wash the trees down with a water spray in December, spray the new leaves in January - skip these and the February flowering will not come right.
6. 6Decide about bagging early, because this is where the money changes. Bagging costs about Tk 100,000 more per acre, but the fruit stays free of pesticide and fetches a far better price.
7. 7Fix your year-round labour. Besides the two partners, the Sokhipur orchard keeps four permanent workers all year and takes on extra hands at selling time.
8. 8Respect the official picking date. In Rajshahi in 2026 only ripe guti mango could come to market from 15 May, and the haat leaseholder announced by loudspeaker that unripe fruit would be fined.
9. 9Settle the weight of a maund before you sell. Forty kilos or forty-five - if it is not written down, five kilos a maund simply disappears.
10. 10Get quotes from more than one buyer - the orchard wholesaler, the arats at Baneshwar or Akkelpur, and the pickle factories. Guti mango's real buyers are the pickle traders; local people do not eat it.
11. 11Once you are buying and reselling, take a trade licence from the union parishad or municipality, and record the weight and price of every consignment.

Sources

• সিটি কর্পোরেশন থেকে ট্রেড লাইসেন্স প্রাপ্তির ধাপ সমূহ

  Collected: 16 Sept 2026

  Supports: Starting capital · বাংলাদেশ

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