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At least 19,568 hectares of cropland, mostly with aman paddy, have been damaged across four districts in Rajshahi division in the several days of torrential rain caused by a low-pressure system over the Bay of Bengal.

The situation, however, has been exacerbated allegedly by unplanned excavation of ponds, dug mostly for commercial fish culture on fertile farmland, putting up barriers across lowlands and natural canals that once carried rainwater to rivers.

Experts said that hundreds of large ponds, each covering several acres to several hundred acres, were dug for commercial aquaculture in the farmland and the lowland areas known as bil in Rajshahi, Naogaon, Natore and Chapainawabganj districts.

The trend grew gradually over the past two decades that sped up in the last 10 years, they said.

Official data show that the number of ponds in Rajshahi district alone increased from 40,788 in 2015 to 51,275 in 2025, marking a 25 per cent rise in just a decade.

According to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department’s Rajshahi Observatory, the northern district recorded 61.6 millimetres of rainfall between October 28 and October 31.

The heavy rain laid bare the acute problem the arbitrary digging of the fishing ponds has caused to the division’s crop farming.

Farmers and experts have said that the pond owners to save their fish from being washed away in heavy rain, erected dykes around the ponds, effectively preventing rainwater to run into the low land to be carried away to the river system.

As a result, the water collected from the from four days’ heavy rain became stagnated, submerging hundreds of aman paddy fields.

In these four districts, many fish ponds also overflowed, releasing fish into nearby wetlands and washing away thin embankments between croplands.

Sabina Begum, deputy director at the Rajshahi divisional office of the Department of Agricultural Extension, told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· on Sunday that about 19,000 hectares of cropland, especially of aman paddy, were affected by the recent rainfall in the division.

‘The main cause behind the water stagnation in the low-lying areas is the unplanned excavation of a huge number of ponds right in the middle of farmland, without any proper design or drainage plan,’ Sabina Begum said.

‘As a result, whenever there is heavy rain, water from the ponds overflows onto nearby croplands, causing water stagnation in paddy fields with no outlet for the water to drain away,’ she said.

The agricultural official said that they were still compiling upazila-level reports to assess the loss and added that the overall production loss would depend on whether the fields could dry within the next few days.

Jahangir Alam, district fisheries officer in Rajshahi, told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· that reports of large quantities of fish being washed away came from several areas, including Tanore and Bagmara upazilas.

‘The full extent of loss is still being assessed,’ he said.

He clarified that the

situation was caused by heavy rainfall rather than a flood.

‘Due to heavy rain and the unplanned digging of ponds, water from some areas cannot drain out properly. That is what’s causing the crop damage,’ he said.

The fisheries officer noted that Rajshahi district had 67 bils (low land) of which about 90 per cent were excavated and turned into ponds and dykes were erected around them.

‘The remaining 10 per cent are open bils, but even there, fish farming is done collectively. There are no entirely open water bodies left,’ he added.

Saiful Islam, a farmer from Krishnapur of Tanore upazila, said that the torrential rain sent the paddy on his eight bigha to fall flat.

‘Around 80 per cent of the farmers in the field are facing the same situation. We have to harvest the paddy half-ripe,’ he said, adding that or else, the crop would get damaged completely.

Saiful added that earlier rainwater used to drain within a day or two, but the new ponds around their fields had trapped the water.

The push for fish farming has been strong in the Barind region.

With declining rice prices and frequent droughts, many landowners have shifted to aquaculture, seeing it as a faster source of profit.

‘If I grow Aman, I might earn Tk 20,000; with fish, it’s double,’ said Abdur Rahman of Tanore.

But his neighbour Nurul Islam pointed to his flooded field: ‘When his pond overflowed, all my seedlings went under water. He made money, I lost everything.’

Shahidul Islam, researcher and regional coordinator at Bangladesh Resource Centre for Indigenous Knowledge, said that large bils used to act as reservoirs, with natural low points and inlets that drained water quickly into rivers.

‘Now, with so many ponds dug inside these bils, the inlets are blocked, and the water has nowhere to go,’ he said.

‘The main cause of this crisis is the uncontrolled digging of ponds and neglect of the natural drainage system,’ he added, stressing planned development respecting natural water systems as solutions.