Potato campaign
Photo: Shafiq Islam / driknews
This year Bangladesh witnessed a bumper production of potatoes. An extra 3 million metric tones of potato has been produced by the farmers. The World Food Program (WFP) has also declared 2008 as the Potato Year. Because of the excess production a huge amount of potatoes is rotting and the farmers have no way but to dump the lot! The government, especially the army chief Gen. Moeen, has been emphasising consumption of potatoes. However, this message has been misinterpreted. The government is urging the people to consume potatoes every day with rice. But some people are misinterpreting it as an attempt to substitute rice with potato. Although there has been a bumper production of boro crop, the prices of rice have not gone down. Thus, consuming more potatoes would certainly reduce pressure on rice. Recently, the government arranged a three-day long potato fair. The initiative appeared to be fine to me. As a visitor, I found the fair very interesting. However, if the recipes of the potato made items were available to the visitors the fair would have been even more successful. The way the electronic media is supporting the campaign is really appreciable. The government should hold such fairs on crops and other agricultural products so that we can have an opportunity to know about our crops. We have to use our own resources for survival.
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