The New Nation - Internet Edition

AGRICULTURE experts told a consultative workshop jointly organised recently by the Agriculture Ministry and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation that climate change reduces rice consumption by 8 kilograms per head a year in countries like Bangladesh. Climate change has posed 'serious threats' to agriculture and livelihoods and further affects the food chain, especially by depleting the number of animals and fish eaten by humans. Bangladesh may even experience 13-17 per cent loss in crop production due to the effects of global warming apart from the phenomenon's threats to livestock and fisheries resources.

Factors such as shrinking farmland, increasing land fragmentation, limited diversification and declining profitability of the farm sector are also found to have been constraining the country's agriculture and causing more sufferings to farmers. The experts, however, pointed out that Bangladesh has a huge potential to increase crop productivity, fisheries and livestock despite climate change effects if the right policies are followed. Bridging the yield gap, scaling up farmers' management practices and bringing fallow land under cultivation may help. Average water salinity increased over 17.2 per cent almost in all places from the 1980s and more than 1.7 lakh hectares of land have already been affected.

There have however, been suggestions that the country must increase food production at faster than 1.5 per cent, which is the rate of population growth. At the same time, the country will have to make surface water available and reduce dependence on irrigation. In this context, the need for increasing efforts for adaptation of agricultural systems to new conditions is stressed in order to preserve and promote the resilience of the rural economy. The government would need $5 billion in the next five years for investment to enable the country to cope with the effects of climate change.