45 years of unadulterated horse-driven ghani mustard oil: Tk 300-350 a kg, Tk 30,000-40,000 a month

A 71-year-old man in a border village of Sunamganj Sadar has pressed mustard oil in a wooden ghani for 45 years. When poverty hit in the year of his marriage, they started on his wife's suggestion; her family did ghani work, and there were complaints of adulteration locally, so her rule was to stay honest. The couple did everything together: growing, harvesting and threshing the mustard, drying it and processing it. Today, in a 15 ft by 15 ft tin-roofed shed, a horse pulls the ghani for three hours in the morning and three in the afternoon. In two rounds, 10 kg of mustard gives six kg of oil, which sells for Tk 300-350 a kg. Each year he stocks Tk 3-3.5 lakh worth of mustard at Tk 75-80 a kg, from Chhatak and Companiganj in Sylhet, and grows some himself. The oil income built a house, bought land, married off four daughters and paid for his son's education. He now runs the business with his son and earns Tk 30,000-40,000 a month after costs. The upazila administration honoured him for producing pure oil.