Ispahani Agro Limited
Ispahani Agro Limited (IAL), an agro based sister concern of Ispahani group, has started its journey with the vision ‘Safe food for better life’ since 2007. Currently, IAL is working as trusted partner of the farmers in agro management with its quality seeds and biopesticides based pest management. Notably, IAL is the first in Bangladesh to introduce bio-pesticide in the agricultural sector. Bringing these environment friendly technologies to farmers’ fields is our commitment towards sustainable agriculture.
Bio-pesticides are relatively a new concept in Bangladesh and it requires substantial work to build acceptability and credibility among the farmers. As a pioneer, IAL has undertaken wide range of activities to aware, educate and motivate the farmers to use environment friendly technologies. Learning plots, Farmers Learning Sessions, Hands on coaching for neighbor farmers, Agro Fairs, Road shows etc. are few examples of this initiative through which IAL has reached 1,054,752farmers during last five years.
Bio-pesticides based pest management have several advantages over synthetic chemical pesticides such as increased agricultural productivity, reduced production cost, improved soil health, safe produce etc. These multiple factors lead to the farmer’s success.
Nazrul Mia, a farmer, living in Koyra upozial of Khulna district usually grows watermelon in his small holding land. Before adopting IAL’s agro package, he used to get low yield, made less profit out of his small piece of land. Nazrul Mia came to know about IAL & its agro solution through local miking. After which he along with few other neighbor farmers went to the training session arranged by IAL and follow its prescribed agro solution.
He again cultivated watermelon in 2017 season on three big has (99 decimal) of land but this time by using agro solution (Sweet Green variety, pheromone, bio derma etc.) marketed by IAL. Number of fruits was higher (143 pcs per bigha) this time. Moreover, fruit size was uniform and larger (12-15 Kg) than the earlier one (8-10 Kg). As a result, he could sell his produce at Tk. 6 higher price. Besides, his production cost reduced to three-fourth as bio-pesticides based pest management was practiced. Nazrul is very happy as reduced production cost and higher market price have increased his profit margin by 25%.
IAL is working relentlessly to promote sustainable agriculture for creating such success cases for millions of farmers in Bangladesh throughout the process, IAL tailored the global SDG2to the local development context. Under the framework of SDG2, IAL’s effort includes ensuring sustainable food production system that increase the agricultural productivity, income of the growers and help maintain ecosystem etc.