Medicinal plants serve as important therapeutic agents as well as valuable raw materials for manufacturing numerous traditional and modern medicines. Aloe vera is a top ranked medicinal plant in Bangladesh. The objective of this study is to investigate the costs, returns and profitability of Aloe vera medicinal plant. The data were collected from the selected farmers of Bogura and Natore districts in Bangladesh during 2018. The total sample size is 123. The study applies the profitability analysis, break-even points and margin of safety percentage techniques. Surveyed farms are found at ranged from 0.01 to 0.41 hectares. Average cost of production per hectare is found at Tk. 876468.80, of which Tk. 647156.40 for operational cost and Tk. 229312.40 for fixed costs accounting for 73.84% and 26.16% of the total cost, respectively. The average yield of Aloe vera is stood at 41487.62 kg per hectare which is sold to two different markets: contract markets and local market. The mean price is estimated at Tk. 32.42 per kg in study area. The gross margin and net margin per hectare are found to be Tk. 698068.02 and Tk. 468755.61, respectively. The breakeven analysis showed that in the case of yield and price, the margin of safety percentage of Aloe vera is -53.48. It is also found at 42.01, 67.15 and 34.85 for variable cost, fixed cost and total cost of Aloe vera production. Therefore, the study noted that the Aloe vera medicinal plant production is profitable in the study area. Farmers have a great opportunity to allocate more land to Aloe vera production, which will make them more profit. Break-even analysis of Aloe vera production resists a large drop of yield and price before incurring a loss, which gives the farmers a comfortable margin of safety and a risk bearing ability. Res. Agric., Livest. Fish.7(1): 75-81, April 2020

The mud crab business is being considered by most marketing operators to be a profitable and sustainable business due to the high demand in the international market. This study aims to determine value addition at different actors-based steps; primary data was collected from 100 respondents (40 collectors, 10 fatteners, 20 depot owners, 20 suppliers and 10 exporters) who were selected randomly from Khulna, Satkhira and Dhaka district. The mud crab analysis reveals that the value addition of the fatteners was the highest among all other intermediaries which was Tk. 11525 and Tk. 10665 per 100 kg of crab for the grade XXLPD in Khulna and Satkhira district respectively, whereas the lowest value addition was Tk. 1450 and Tk. 1090 per 100 kg of crab for grade KS3. The mentioned districts’ highest value addition by depot owners were Tk. 1191 and Tk. 1200 per 100 kg of crab for the grade FF1 respectively, while lowest value addition was Tk. 691 and Tk.750 per 100 kg of crab for the grade L and M, and by suppliers it was Tk. 2918 and 2758 per 100 kg of crab for the grade FF1. The range of value addition by exporters for Hong-Kong and Taiwan market was Tk. 260.25 to Tk. 13825 per 100 kg of crab. Value addition for exporting female crab to Taiwan market was greater than Hong-Kong market.