The New Nation - Internet Edition

AGRICULTURE continues to be too vital for the food security and macro economic stability of Bangladesh. Growing imports of food products with the rising forex reserve has been possible. But such imports climbing higher and stressing the reserve on a regular basis, could seriously strain the country's macro economic stability. Experts are not satisfied with the progress in agricultural productivity. The only success story is in the area of rice production. The annual average of rice production was some 11 million tonnes in 1971 which has increased to 26 million tonnes in recent years. The population also doubled to 150 million during the three decades.

Still, in recent years, foodgrain production was found short of total effective demand by at least half a million tonnes on average which had to be met by imports. The population would likely increase by some 20 million in the next twenty years and food grain production must at least rise proportionately. But agricultural lands are being put increasingly into non-agricultural uses. Some 20 per cent agricultural lands have been lost from this process during the last 10 years, according to one estimate.

In such a situation, only increasing the per hectare yield of foodgrains seems to be the way for Bangladesh to keep on matching higher demands with adequate supplies. The present average output per acre is about 3 tonnes per hectare which must be raised to 5 tonnes as has been the case in Korea and Japan. The Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) has so far invented 47 new high yielding varieties of rice. But only a handful of them have been popularised although there are at least a dozen varieties which can yield substantially higher outputs than the ones which are being cultivated. The new varieties of seeds developed by the BRRI should be put to widespread field level applications.