poor labourers. Your livelihood is maintained by their money. We ride on cars paid by them. Talk to them respectfully. Treat them with honours. They are the owners. Your sangshar-livelihood is maintained by them”. The Annual Growth of Gross Domestic Product was recorded at negative fourteen percent in 1972, the year when we got the independence. The first time independent Bangladesh was predicted to be an "international basket case" was on December 6, 1971, when the interdepartmental Washington Special Actions Group (WSAG) met to discuss the situation in South Asia by Mr Kissinger, the then Secretary of States of United States of America. But the country experienced annual growth rate of 3.3 and 9.6 percent respectively in 1973 and 1974. The primary reason is the direction of Bangabandhu in the field of agriculture. Bangladesh is the largest delta in the globe. Sitting at the confluence of the Ganges, our country is enriched with the siltation brought in by the Ganges. Agriculture is the largest employment sector in Bangladesh. The performance of this sector has an overwhelming impact on major macroeconomic objectives like employment generation, poverty alleviation, human resources development, food security, etc. A plurality of Bangladeshis earns their living from agriculture. Although rice and jute are the primary crops, wheat is assuming greater importance. Tea is grown in the northeast. Because of Bangladesh's fertile soil and normally ample water supply, rice can be grown and harvested three times a year in many areas. Due to a number of factors, Bangladesh's labour-intensive agriculture has achieved steady increases in food grain production despite the often unfavourable weather conditions. These include better flood control and irrigation, a generally more efficient use of fertilisers, and the establishment of better distribution and rural credit networks. Agriculture is a major source of rural jobs in Bangladesh.
incomes and jobs in a severely land constrained economy, but struggle because of inadequate government support.Agricultural progress and adapting to future challenges for Bangladesh
Bangladesh
now needs to shift toward high-value agriculture, including horticulture, livestock, poultry and fisheries to foster future growth and further reduce poverty
Masihul Huq Chowdhury
Bangabandhu while addressing the public gathering on 26th March, 1975 at Suhrawardy Uddan gave direction, This has to come to an end. Your work, your salary is paid by these poor peasants. Your salary is paid by these poor labourers. Your livelihood is maintained by their money. We ride on cars paid by them. Talk to them respectfully. Treat them with honours. They are the owners. Your sangshar-livelihood is maintained by them. The Annual Growth of Gross Domestic Product was recorded at negative fourteen percent in 1972, the year when we got the independence. The first time independent Bangladesh was predicted to be an international basket case was on December 6, 1971, when the interdepartmental Washington Special Actions Group (WSAG) met to discuss the situation in South Asia by Mr Kissinger, the then Secretary of States of United States of America. But the country experienced annual growth rate of 3.3 and 9.6 percent respectively in 1973 and 1974. The primary reason is the direction of Bangabandhu in the field of agriculture. Bangladesh is the largest delta in the globe. Sitting at the confluence of the Ganges, our country is enriched with the siltation brought in by the Ganges. Agriculture is the largest employment sector in Bangladesh. The performance of this sector has an overwhelming impact on major macroeconomic objectives like employment generation, poverty alleviation, human resources development, food security, etc. A plurality of Bangladeshis earns their living from agriculture. Although rice and jute are the primary crops, wheat is assuming greater importance. Tea is grown in the northeast. Because of Bangladeshs fertile soil and normally ample water supply, rice can be grown and harvested three times a year in many areas. Due to a number of factors, Bangladeshs labour-intensive agriculture has achieved steady increases in food grain production despite the often unfavourable weather conditions. These include better flood control and irrigation, a generally more efficient use of fertilisers, and the establishment of better distribution and rural credit networks. Agriculture is a major source of rural jobs in Bangladesh.
Over 87 percent rural people derive at least some income from agriculture. However, two thirds of rural households rely on both farm and non-farm incomes. Pro-poor agriculture growth has stimulated the non-farm economy in Bangladesh: a 10 percent rise in farm incomes generates a 6 percent rise in non-farm incomes. As non-farm incomes continue to grow, the government needs to focus on fostering a more robust rural non-farm economy. With 35.8 million metric tons produced in 2000, rice is Bangladeshs principal crop. National sales of the classes of insecticide used on rice, including granular carbofuran, synthetic pyrethroids, and malathion exceeded 13,000 tons of formulated product in 2003. The insecticides not only represent an environmental threat, but are a significant expenditure to poor rice farmers. The Bangladesh Rice Research Institute is working with various NGOs and international organisations to reduce insecticide use in rice.Agriculture has played a key role in reducing Bangladeshs poverty from 48.9% in 2000 to 31.5% by 2010 with over 87% of rural people part of their some income from agricultural activities. Irrigation, high-yielding crop varieties, more efficient markets, and mechanisation, enabled by policy reforms and investments in agriculture research, human capital, and roads have driven growth. Bangladesh now needs to shift toward high-value agriculture, including horticulture, livestock, poultry and fisheries to foster future growth and further reduce poverty. Bangladesh is well known for its progress in human development. But its achievements in agriculture remain an untold story despite being key to reducing poverty since 2000. A new World Bank report Dynamics of Rural Growth in Bangladesh: Sustaining Poverty Reduction identifies changes in the farm and non-farm sectors of the rural economy and the policy implications and actions to foster future growth, further reduce poverty, and improve food security and nutrition. Bangladesh lies at the bottom of the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna (GBM) river system. Bangladesh is watered by a total of 57 trans-boundary rivers flowing to it: 54 from neighbouring India and three from Myanmar. The country, which has no control of water flows and volume, drains to the Bay of Bengal. Coupled with the high level of widespread poverty and increasing population density, limited adaptive capacity, and poorly funded, ineffective local governance have made the region one of the most adversely affected on the planet. There are an estimated one thousand people in each square kilometre, with the national population increasing by two million people each year. Almost half the population is in poverty (defined as purchasing power parity of US$1.25 per person a day). The population lacks the resources to respond to natural disasters as the government cannot help them.Agriculture plays a key role in Bangladeshs economic growth. Extensive irrigation, high-yielding crop varieties, more efficient markets, and mechanisation, enabled by policy reforms and investments in agriculture research, human capital, and roads have driven agriculture sectors growth.Challenges Climate change, limited diversity and opportunity poises the key challenge.
Bangladeshs rural economy, and specifically agriculture, has been powerful driver of poverty reduction in Bangladesh since 2000. Indeed, agriculture accounted for 90 percent of the reduction in poverty between 2005 and 2010. More than 70 percent of Bangladeshs population and 77 percent of its workforce lives in rural areas. Nearly half of all of Bangladeshs workers and two-thirds in rural areas are directly employed by agriculture, and about 87 percent of rural households rely on agriculture for at least part of their income. Bangladesh has made commendable progress over the past 40 years in achieving food security, despite frequent natural disasters and population growth (food grain production, for example, tripled between 1972 and 2014, from 9.8 to 34.4 million tons). With one of the fastest rates of productivity growth in the world since 1995 (averaging 2.7 percent per year, second only to China), Bangladeshs agricultural sector has benefited from a sound and consistent policy framework backed up by substantial public investments in technology, rural infrastructure and human capital. But Bangladesh is among the most vulnerable countries to climate change, which poses a long-term threat to the countrys agricultural sector, particularly in areas affected by flooding, saline intrusion, and drought. Faster and more inclusive rural growth with job creation will require greater agricultural diversification together with more robust rural non-farm enterprise development. A shift in production from rice to higher-value crops will significantly reduce malnutrition, trigger more rapid growth in incomes, and create more and better on-farm and non-farm jobs, especially for women and youth. Livestock and fisheries also offer tremendous potential for reducing malnutrition and increasing incomes and jobs in a severely land constrained economy, but struggle because of inadequate government support.
Investment in and expansion of the rural non-farm enterprises (or RNFEs) is a parallel priority for Bangladesh. RFNEs can help households become more resilient to climate shocks through income and livelihood diversification. And they can be a potentially powerful source of job generation, especially for youth and women, through more efficient and competitive value chains.The Integrated Agriculture Productivity Project (IAPP) is designed to improve resilience of agriculture production particularly in northern and southern affected by flash floods, drought and saline intrusion from tidal surges. IAPP also supports adaptation and mitigation programs that introduce heat-tolerant, drought-tolerant and saline-tolerant crops, improved soil health management, and diversification out of rice production. The Modern Food Storage Facilities Project (MFSFP), initiated in 2007 when Bangladesh faced a potential food security crisis because it was unable to procure rice on the international markets, expands and improves grain storage infrastructure and strengthens the management of grain stocks. It will enable Bangladesh to better withstand frequent threats to food security, especially for its poorest and most vulnerable citizens, from natural disasters and external shocks.
The Social Investment Program Project (SIPP-III), known as the Nuton Jibon Livelihood Improvement Project (NJLIP), builds and strengthens community institutions that mobilize the poor and extreme poor, and provides them with funding for small infrastructure and livelihood support, nutrition awareness, and agricultural production knowledge. NJLIP also increases economic opportunities through producer groups, cooperatives and societies that promote access to markets. The National Agriculture Technology Program (NATP-II) helps the Government of Bangladesh increase productivity and food security, encourage climate change adaptation, and enhance nutrition through safer and more diversified foods. It focuses on better technology and farm production practices, and it targets small holders and womens participation in agriculture.Eight modern steel grain storage silos will be constructed with a capacity of about 535,500 tons of rice and wheat; 500,000 households will have household storage silos in the disaster-prone areas including the coastal zone by 2020. More than one million farmers (35 percent female) will benefit from the project activities.There will be 14 to 100 percent average annual yield increases in certain agriculturalcommodities. More than 21,000 tons of agricultural commodities will be sold annually through new structures by 2025.
Digitisation in the modern age means that almost every contemporary field or industry is becoming more and more reliant on hardware connected to and, in some cases, controlled by software. These industries are being transformed from the inside out by innovative technology and practices, and even traditionally analogue ways of life are finding it difficult to resist disruption. Traditional farmers could take a lesson from vertical farmers in their buildings and design, adopting the tenets of smart design to reduce waste and increase yield. Josh Tittle, writing on smart and sustainable barn design, reminds that its easy to get carried away by what you want rather than what you need. As we continue to overpopulate our world and take up space, well need to rely on efficiency in spaces and growth to continue to feed ourselves. Unfortunately, no matter how high we build or how intelligently we design, human beings are causing extensive damage and change to our environments, impacting our ability to raise healthy, mature crops. While most people know the blockchain for its application in cryptocurrency finance, the agricultural world is beginning to get to know this innovative new technology in another capacity.
Commodity traders Louis Dreyfus Co. (LDC) recently completed the first blockchain-powered agricultural trade, selling and delivering 60,000 tons of soybeans to China in December 2017. This trade represents how the blockchain will likely be used in agriculture early on, with decentralized transactions and self-executing smart contracts.Most of the early applications of blockchain in agriculture have to do with traceability and supply chains; a blockchain ledger could record and update the status of crops from planting to harvest to storage to delivery, writes Remi Schmaltz with AgFunder News. The upside for large operations is a secure, immutable ledger that ensures you never lose a load. The status of all your crops is available in real time. Another way that the blockchain can be used is for resource management, like tracking machinery maintenance records or for tracking other sensors and equipment.
Nearly 200,000 coastal residents will be forced to migrate to inland areas to find alternative livelihoods, according to a recent study. This will be caused by increased inundation and saline contamination of the soil, hitting crop production and incomes, said the study by Valerie Mueller, a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and Joyce Chen, associate professor at Ohio State University. Many parts of Bangladesh are under severe threat of future sea-level submergence, but studies show the migratory response to flooding is likely to be minimal, as most farmers have already adapted their cultivation practices to cope with changes in the frequency and intensity of flooding in this deltaic region, Mueller said in the press release on Oct. 22. However, our study shows increased soil salinity from rising seas will push nearly 140,000 coastal residents to migrate to another location within their district, and nearly 60,000 would move to alternate districts. The researchers merged administrative data on migration and production, covering nearly half a million coastal households in a year, along with onsite data on environmental factors to draw associations between migration and soil salinity.A country like Bangladesh is especially vulnerable to climate change. The countrys population at risk of sea-level rise is expected to touch 27 million by 2050, as per the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) . But there isnt a one-size-fits-all solution to the climate crisis for the people of Bangladesh. we find distinct migration responses to rises in soil salinity. Internal migration increases with soil salinity, while international migration declines with soil salinity, Mueller told Quartz. Some of the qualitative studies in the region suggest that those who would typically be inclined to move abroad might be staying to take advantage of jobs provided by the growing aquaculture sector. In the affected regions, taking up aquaculture helped soften the blow. When soil salinity moves from low to high levels, theres a nearly 57% increase in the share of revenue from aquaculture, the research revealed. But theres no smooth line defining the phenomenon. Rather, there appears to be tipping points that lead to migration and/or conversion to aquaculture, Chen told Quartz. With tipping points, there is (a) greater risk of seeing large, discrete changes as wellfor example, (a) mass exodus from a coastal community. With people taking advantage of the aquaculture opportunities, there may be more barriers that come up for traditional farmers, too. Infrastructure projects such as embankments and polders may have more limited success since households involved in fishing would do fine with brackish water, making them reluctant to maintain such infrastructure, the study found.Most migrants from coastal areas are likely to enter the capital city of Dhaka and neighbouring districts in the coastal region itself, the researchers found.The Chittagong and Khulna districtshome to the second- and third-largest cities in Bangladeshare likely to witness the highest within-district additional migration, estimated between 15,000 and 30,000 people per year. To minimise moving costs, and remain close to family, individuals may move inland where the demand for agricultural labor is relatively unaffected by salinity, Mueller said. However, higher wages and denser labour markets may draw workers instead to urban areas.The biggest burden of climate change falls on lower-economic households, who neither have the luxury to move, nor are they able to sustain their existing living. Financial constraints limit poor households from moving over longer distances, signaling a trapped population dynamic, raising concerns that the most vulnerable households may be the least resilient in the face of climate change, Chen said. Climate change is a massive problem for human beings that, perhaps, hasnt been fully realised yet but its no secret that were on an extremely destructive path. If climate change continues to worsen, food shortages could drive prices higher even in more developed countries like the U.S., leading to a public health crisis in the form of global food shortages and waves of hunger, write the experts at the University of Reno, Nevada in their blog. As such, public health officials should turn their attention to exploring efforts to shore up food reserves and alternative forms of agriculture.
One of the problems that it seems everybody is familiar with is the problem of disappearing bees Time magazine claims that there are more than 700 species of North American Bee that headed toward extinction. This could spell disaster, as bees play an important economic role as pollinators helping sustain agricultural production, they write. In the United States, that value reaches billions of dollars annually, according to a 2015 White House report. Fortunately, drones are now being used in experiments to, hopefully, supplement the pollination efforts that bees have traditionally completed. In the long run, the climatic change could affect agriculture in several ways: productivity, in terms of quantity and quality of crops; agricultural practices, through changes of water use (irrigation) and agricultural inputs such as herbicides, insecticides and fertilisers; environmental effects, in particular in relation of frequency and intensity of soil drainage (leading to nitrogen leaching), soil erosion, reduction of crop diversity; rural space, through the loss and gain of cultivated lands, land speculation, land renunciation, and hydraulic amenities; adaptation, organisms may become more or less competitive, as well as humans may develop urgency to develop more competitive organisms, such as flood resistant or salt resistant varieties of rice. A viable alternative exists in the shape of diversified agro-ecological systems. In other words, diversifying farms and farming landscapes replacing synthetic chemical inputs, optimising biodiversity and stimulating interactions between different species, as part of holistic and regenerative strategies to build long-term soil fertility, healthy agro-ecosystems and secure livelihoods. Too often, these arguments are dismissed as technophobia. We are told that the opponents of industrial agriculture want to eschew technological advance and keep developing regions mired in non-mechanised, subsistence-style agriculture. However, this is a false dichotomy. A transition to diversified agro-ecological systems is needed, whether the starting point is industrial agriculture or subsistence-style farming. Moreover, the agro-ecological alternative is hi-tech and knowledge intensive it requires complex synergies to be built and sustained between different crop varieties and species, and between different farming systems (mixed crop-livestock systems, for instance).The growing body of evidence reviewed by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (iPES-Food) shows the huge potential of these systems to succeed where industrial systems are failing namely in reconciling concerns such as food security, environmental and livelihood resilience, nutritional adequacy and social equity. The social change that so often accompanies this shift paves the way for revaluing local farming within new and often shorter supply chains, providing vulnerable populations with a viable alternative to the high and volatile production costs of industrial commodity agriculture and the uncertainties of global markets. The picture is far from complete. To date these systems have seen only minimal investment and support. Either way, the burden of proof is on the proponents of industrial agriculture to show how it can ever be productive and sustainable, with or without miracle breakthroughs. In the meantime, a less dazzling but highly compelling agro-ecological alternative is taking shape and transforming food systems around the world. It deserves our urgent attention. Under the able leadership of our present Prime Minister we have come across miles in achieving the autarky in food.
It is evident that the international prices of agricultural inputs have increased globally which has impacted the domestic price of agricultural outputs. We need to work on the areas where the profits of the agricultural trade need to go to their real producers ie farmers in place of the middlemen. We also need to get prepared to address the impact of global warming on the agriculture and adopt accordingly.
The writer, a banker by profession, has worked both in local and overseas market with various foreign and local banks in different positions
