29 tonnes of onion seed a year, grown by 350 farmers across 14 districts

This 57-year-old from Melandi village in Mohanpur, Rajshahi, was taken out of school in class seven by his elder brother and put behind a plough. He was growing only rice when he begged seven and a half kilos of planting onions off a neighbouring seed grower, sowed them on his homestead and sold the seed at 750 taka a kilo. His first real setback came when 4 maund of seed he had stored in jute sacks failed to germinate: he could not take payment from the farmers he had supplied, and the Barind Development Authority told him seed must be kept airtight in tins or barrels. About 25 years ago a neighbour carried some of his seed to Pabna, where farmers paid 2,500 taka a kilo, against the 500 taka a kilo he had been getting for 5 maund sold locally - and that market opened up to him. He now has six hybrid varieties of his own naming, produced through about 350 contract farmers spread deliberately across 14 districts so that one hailstorm cannot destroy the whole crop, and he keeps the parentage secret by giving each field only a code number. He supplies the planting onions, lends interest-free and buys the whole crop back for cash. Last year he produced 29 metric tons against a target of 40, with onion seed selling wholesale at 3,500 to 6,000 taka a kilo. A kilo of seed sows 33 to 45 shotok and a bigha yields 70 to 80 maund of onion, against a national seed demand of at most 1,500 metric tons.