Across Gazipur, orchards are full of ripe jackfruits, but many remain unsold. With demand low and transport costs rising, farmers are watching the fruit rot in their orchards, turning what should have been a profitable season into one of losses.
"In 2000, jackfruit prices once fell drastically. Even then, I managed to save some money by selling around a thousand jackfruits. After that, the market remained fairly good for the next 25 years," said Motahar Hossain Muntu, 70, a farmer from Khodadia village in Kapasia who has been involved in the seasonal jackfruit trade since childhood.
"But this season, I could not sell jackfruits. Even the jackfruits from my own trees have ripened and fallen to the ground," he said.
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Muntu said he had no intention of planting another tree or buying a new orchard in the future.
"This is the end for me."
The crisis is visible across Kapasia and other parts of Gazipur.
During a field visit yesterday, Alauddin, 65, was found sitting beside the road at Barahar Bazar on the Dhaka-Kishoreganj highway with three jackfruits. By noon, he had not managed to sell a single one.
Mostafa Mia of Belashi village, who owns 30 jackfruit trees, said buyers this season had offered only Tk 5 each for 100 jackfruits, against Tk 20 to Tk 30 apiece last year.
Unable to find buyers, he fed the unsold fruit to his cattle.
"Every year, I can sell jackfruits worth at least Tk 3,000 to Tk 4,000," he said.
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Some relief has come in the closing weeks of the season, with prices picking up slightly as supplies thin out.
Mostafa said jackfruits from five trees near the mosque at Kothamoni Bazar fetched relatively good prices last week. Encouraged by the rise, some farmers are now keeping unsold fruit on the trees, tied with jute sacks, in the hope of getting better prices before the season ends.
According to the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), jackfruit is cultivated on around 8,502 hectares in Gazipur, including 2,950 hectares in Shreepur alone, producing roughly 257,509 tonnes a year.
Amzad Hossain, a grower from Baniarchala village in Gazipur Sadar, said local sales had declined and buyers had become scarce.
Jackfruit from Gazipur is sent to other parts of the country, mostly Sylhet, he said, but this year supply had outstripped demand even as the market remained stocked.
Not every farmer has been hit equally hard.
Md Alamgir, a grower from Halukaid village in Shreepur's Rajabari union, said those who had sold their orchards in advance were largely shielded from the crash.
"But those like me who did not sell the jackfruits from their orchards all at once have suffered the most," he said.
Asaduzzaman Akash, a teacher and farmer from Pachua village, said many jackfruits were still ripening on trees, while insects and birds were damaging them and ripe fruit was falling to the ground.
"Jackfruit is our national fruit. This is the tragic situation of the fruit even in my own home in Kapasia," he said.
He added that even cattle were no longer eating much of the discarded fruit and people were not collecting the seeds.
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Akash urged the authorities concerned to ensure fair prices for growers and revive efforts to expand markets for jackfruit.
"I once heard that there was an initiative to export jackfruit to China. It would be very good if such an initiative could be implemented," he said.
Rising costs have compounded the crisis for traders as well as growers.
Milon Mia, a trader from Kapasia who usually carries jackfruit to Sylhet each year, said he had skipped the route entirely this season and switched to buying and selling locally instead.
He cited a sharp rise in truck rental costs, which he linked to higher fuel prices.
"At the same time, people are buying less jackfruit. I do not know why demand has fallen," he said.
Another trader on the Raniganj-Gazipur regional road, who did not want to be named, said transporting jackfruit from Gazipur to Sylhet involved additional costs along the way.
Teacher Badshah Abdullah said large jackfruits, grown at the cost of a year's tree care, fertiliser, labour and transport, had sold for as little as Tk 10 to Tk 20 at local markets this season, though prices had risen slightly as the season drew to a close.
Kapasia has more than 50 jackfruit markets, he said.
Mohammad Rafiqul Islam Khan, deputy director of the DAE in Gazipur, said farmers routinely suffered losses when prices fell during the season and that establishing jackfruit-processing industries would help secure fairer prices and reduce wastage.
He confirmed that an opportunity to export jackfruit to China had already emerged and said the department would provide all possible support to implement it.
Gazipur-4 (Kapasia) lawmaker Salahuddin Ayubi told The Daily Star that such an initiative could bring major benefits to Kapasia's farmers if backed by proper government support.
Nationally, Bangladesh produces between 800,000 and one million tonnes of jackfruit annually, according to the Fruit Research Centre of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute. But weak domestic demand and limited export opportunities mean more than 45 percent of the harvest goes to waste each year, the centre said.
