Around 54,101 tonnes of lentils are expected to be produced from 35,380 hectares of land in the division during the current Rabi season, officials said.

Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) has set the target of producing 32,411 tonnes of lentil from 20,620 hectares of land in four districts of its Rajshahi Agricultural Zone, while 21,690 tonnes from 14,755 hectares of land in four other districts of Bogura zone.

DAE's Additional Director Shamsul Wadud said all possible measures were adopted to attain the production target of lentil as its newly developed high yielding varieties were provided to the farmers.

Most of the small and marginalized farmers were given seed and fertilizer support for lentil farmers free of cost under the government's agriculture incentive programme.

Abul Kalam Azad, a farmer of Polashbari village under Godagari Upazila, said he is cultivating lentils to avoid hassle in getting irrigation water for paddy.

He said he has cultivated lentils on six-bigha of land this year without spending extra money for irrigation.

A farmer can get five to six maunds of lentil from per bigha of land. One maund of lentil is now being sold at Tk 4,000 to 4,300 in local markets, he said.

Zakir Hossain, another farmer of Hatibandha village, said the growers here are showing more interest in lentil cultivation as it does not take much irrigation cost. Besides, they got abundant production in the last couple of years.

Sub Assistant Agriculture Officer Atanu Sarker told that the farmers are seen getting better yield of the cash crop for the last couple of years as a result of promoting high yielding varieties and modern management.

All the government and non-government entities concerned are motivating the farmers for farming various water-saving crops including lentil in the Barind area to lessen the gradually mounting pressure on underground water, he said.

More than 1,500 volunteers are engaged in encouraging and inspiring farmers to cultivate less water consuming crops through water resource management on behalf of the recently phased-out 'Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM)' Project.

DASCOH Foundation has implemented the IWRM project in 1,280 drought-hit villages of 39 Union Parishad and three municipalities in eight upazilas of Rajshahi, Naogaon and Chapainawabganj districts supported by Switzerland since 2015.

Farmers have started showing interest in lentil cultivation as they reaped a lucrative market price of the crop in the last couple of years, said IWRM Project Coordinator Jahangir Alam Khan.

He also said the farmers in high Barind areas have to spend much for irrigation in paddy farming, but lentil cultivation needs less irrigation. So farmers are interested in cultivating lentils.

Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute's principal scientific officer Dr Jagadish Chandra Barman said huge lentil output is possible in the Barind region if it is cultivated on around 80,000 hectares of land, which usually remains fallow for more than three months after the harvest of transplanted Aman paddy every year.

The country has to import a huge quantity of pulses, especially lentils to meet its domestic demand. Since there is a bright prospect of increasing its acreage, lentils could be produced in larger amounts with less production cost and the yield will no doubt lessen pressure on import.