Bangladesh Agriculture and Its' Challenges

Bangladesh agriculture and Its' Challenges

BANGLADESH Academy of Agriculture (BAAG), an organization of senior and eminent agriculturists of the country, organized a round table discussion on "Bangladesh Agriculture: Challenges Ahead" just more than a couple of months ago (23rd August) at BARC Conference Room, Dhaka. A large number of shortcomings, as well as challenges, were identified during the meeting and ameliorative measures were suggested. However, the most daunting challenges facing our agriculture and urgently necessary measures are analyzed here.

Feeding the ever-increasing population: Twenty-five lakh increased population per year has been eating up all the achievements in agricultural production. Consequently, people's standard of living is declining and the number of people below the poverty level is increasing. Therefore, population control should be taken up as the most important development agendum alongside improvement in agricultural production.
Constraints and opportunities due to globalization: The relation of Bangladesh with GATT and WTO has put the country in a globalized trade liberalization regime thereby opening the possibility of entry into the world market. But the country is not yet ready to compete with many countries due to quality limitations of its products. Tariff reduction to a much lower level by the WTO has created a condition of unfair competition for our small farmers against big farmers of the West. Policy support, therefore, is needed through revision of the National Agricultural Policy (NAP) to sustain and nurture the small producers and local traders through development of comparative advantage and providing technological know-how and input.
Loss of agricultural land: About 100,000 ha of productive agricultural land is lost per year through non-agricultural use i.e. roads, housing, and other "development" projects. This tantamounts to wanton destruction of the most important natural resource base of agriculture and, if not checked now, the country will be left with very little fertile and productive land in the near future. Therefore immediate promulgation of land policy is needed to save prime cultivable land from further shrinking.
Erosion of river banks: Riverbank erosion affects about 150 Upazilas of 50 out of 64 districts of the country. About one million people are affected by this calamity annually who lose everything -- homestead, land other structures making them virtually beggars. Some of them take shelter in the shanties of towns and others try to make a living out of the occasional shoals ("chars") formed in the river beds. Immediate steps to reduce river erosion through river training and partial taming is to be launched as well as all-out research & extension programs are initiated to augment the productivity of garlands.
Halting degradation of natural resources: Degradation of natural resources has caused almost irreparable damage to agricultural production. These include soil erosion, soil salinity, sedimentation with sand, waterlogging, deforestation, depletion of soil's organic matter, imbalanced fertilization, reducing fish species, etc. Vigorous research and extension programs should be initiated immediately with policy support from the government to halt/this degradation and ensure appropriate production practices.
Global warming & climate change: Significant changes have occurred in the climatological pattern of the country. The frequency of natural calamities like floods, cyclones, drought, etc has increased/become erratic. All these have a profound influence on crop production in the country. Appropriate research and policy planning is needed to recast our crop calendar and introduce a strategy for managing the risks.
Dwindling human resource base: About 400 highly qualified and experienced scientists have emigrated to developed countries due to limitation of career development by way of promotion to next higher grades, lack of higher education and training, and because of retirement at the age of 57 years. A national HRD program has to be developed and implemented to ensure (i) ample scope for promotion to next higher grade (including in situ promotion); (ii) retirement age of 62 years (like the Indian Council of Agriculture); (iii) higher salary and service benefits; (iv) higher study and training, facilities and, (v) provision of extra benefits for extra-ordinary performance. Such measures are expected to slow down the exodus of scientists.
Private sector involvement: The domain of agricultural research and extension in Bangladesh is mainly a public sector function. The absence of business motive has therefore kept it as a slow-moving sector. Policy support to encourage the private sector including NGOs followed by appropriate strategic planning to induce private sector funding of research & extension is a dire need. Many countries have harvested the benefits of private sector investment in agriculture.
Availability of inputs: The inputs for agricultural production are always in short supply. Timely availability of adequate quantities of inputs should be considered as a prerequisite to the proper production of crops and prior arrangement for ensuring their availability should be a routine function of the relevant authorities.
Marketing and agribusiness: These aspects of agriculture have been very much neglected. As a consequence, the farmers do not get the proper price for their produce; the middlemen get the lion's share of the benefit. To ensure the proper price of products to the farmers, there is a need for: (i) improvement of infrastructure & facilities in the market places; (ii) improvement of marketing system and marketing channels; (iii) alleviation of problems faced by the producers, traders, and consumers; (iv) creation of facilities for ushering a smooth field for establishing agribusiness and value addition; (v) arrangement for farmer training to converting subsistence agriculture to commercial agriculture.

wheat is anything but a conventional yield in Bangladesh, and in the late 1980s little was devoured in country zones. Amid the 1960s and mid-1970s, be that as it may, it was the main product for which neighborhood utilization expanded on the grounds that outer sustenance help was regularly given as wheat. In the primary portion of the 1980s, local wheat generation rose to in excess of 1 million tons for each year yet was still just 7 to 9 percent of aggregate nourishment grain creation. Record generation of almost 1.5 million tons was accomplished in FY 1985, however, the next year saw a reduction to a little more than 1 million tons. About a large portion of the wheat is developed on flooded land. The extent of land committed to wheat remained basically unaltered somewhere in the range of 1980 and 1986, at somewhat less than 6 percent of aggregate planted zone Wheat likewise represents the colossal majority of imported nourishment grains, surpassing 1 million tons every year and going higher than 1.8 million tons in FY 1984, FY 1985, and FY 1987. The colossal greater part of the foreign-made wheat is financed under guide projects of the United States, the European Economic Community, and the World Food Program.

Sustenance grains are developed fundamentally for subsistence. Just a little level of aggregate generation advances into business channels. Other Bangladeshi nourishment crops, notwithstanding, are developed mainly for the local market. They incorporate potatoes and sweet potatoes, with a joined record generation of 1.9 million tons in FY 1984; oilseeds, with a yearly normal creation of 250,000 tons; and organic products, for example, bananas, jackfruit, mangoes, and pineapples. Assessments of sugarcane creation put yearly generation at in excess of 7 million tons for every year, its greater part prepared into a coarse, foul sugar known as gur, and sold locally.

Wood is the primary fuel for cooking and other residential necessities. It isn't astounding that populace weight has adversary affected the indigenous woods. By 1980 just around 16 percent of the land was forested, and backwoods had everything except vanished from the thickly populated and seriously developed deltaic plain. Help associations in the mid-1980s started investigating the likelihood of animating little scale ranger service to reestablish an asset for which there was no reasonable substitute.

The biggest zones of timberland are in the Chittagong Hills and the Sundarbans. The evergreen and deciduous backwoods of the Chittagong Hills cover in excess of 4,600 square kilometers and are the wellspring of teak for overwhelming development and pontoon working, and in addition other woodland items. Trained elephants are as yet used to pull logs. The Sundarbans, a tidal mangrove woodland covering almost 6,000 square kilometers along the Bay of Bengal, is the wellspring of timber utilized for an assortment of purposes, including mash for the local paper industry, posts for electric power appropriation, and leaves for covering for residences.

Bangladesh being a first-line littoral condition of the Indian Ocean has a decent wellspring of marine assets in the Bay of Bengal. The nation has a restrictive financial zone of 41,000 square miles (110,000 km2), which is 73% of the nation's property zone. Then again, Bangladesh is a little and creating nation over-burden with the relatively horrendous weight of the human populace. Before, individuals of Bangladesh were for the most part subordinate upon arrive-based proteins. Be that as it may, the nonstop procedure of industrialization and urbanization expands the constrained land zone. Presently there is no other route than to gather the tremendous submerged protein from the Bay of Bengal, which can take care of the nation's demand.

In excess of 80 percent of the creature protein in the Bangladeshi eating, routine originates from the angle. Fish represented 6 percent of GDP in the financial year of 1970, about 50 percent more than current mechanical assembling around then. Most business anglers are low-rank Hindus who squeeze out the barest subsistence working under crude and hazardous conditions. They bring a high level of ability and resourcefulness to their occupation; a couple of the most venturesome ones are helped by trained otters, which act like shepherds, swimming submerged, driving fish toward the angler's net (and being compensated themselves with an offer of the catch). Fish for nearby utilization are for the most part of freshwater assortments.

As of the finish of 1987, winning strategies for refined shrimp in Bangladesh were still moderately unsophisticated, and normal yields per hectare were low. In the late 1980s, all inland rationing was finished bycatch instead of by serious aquaculture. Ranchers depended fundamentally on wild post-larval and adolescent shrimp as their wellsprings of stock, procured either by catching in lakes amid tidal water trade or by social occasion from nearby estuaries and stocking specifically in the lakes. Regardless of the apparently low level of innovation connected to shrimp aquaculture, it turned into an undeniably vital piece of the solidified fish industry in the mid-1980s.

The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank-financed undertakings to create shrimp aquaculture in the 1980s. Private financial specialists were likewise starting comparable activities to expand limits and to present current innovations that would build normal yields.

Preparing for the angling business of Bangladesh, and in addition for dealer sending and related sea, enterprises are given by the Bangladesh Marine Fisheries Academy.