Abstract
Crop agriculture in Bangladesh is constrained every year by challenges, such as
a) Loss of Arabie Land, b) Population Growth, c) Climate Changes, d)
Inadequate Management Practices, e) Unfair Price of Produces, and f)
Insufficient Investment in Research. In Bangladesh, about 80,000 ha of arable
land are going out of production every year. The loss is alarming and needs to be
addressed immediately. The land use policy of the government should be
updated and implemented immediately to stop further loss of arable land.
Another problem to agriculture is the increase in the growth of population. The
twin problem of arable land loss and population growth needs to be addressed
simultaneously to ensure sustainable crop production. Country’s crop production
is also affected frequently by flood, drought, and salinity. Varieties/technologies
tolerant to these natural hazards need to be developed. Renewable energy,
reduction in the use of fossil fuels, and afforestation are recommended to
mitigate the adverse effects of climate change. To sustain crop production,
chemical fertilizers must be integrated with organic manure and costly non-urea
fertilizers should continue to be subsidized. Incidence of pests and diseases has
lately become severe due to climate change impacts. Therefore, more varieties
resistant to the pests should be evolved. Small and marginal farmers of
Bangladesh have limited access to institutional credit. They are not eligible for
microcredit of NGOs either. Establishment of a new institution/foundation in
line with PKSF is recommended to meet their needs. These farmers do not have
farmers’ associations or cooperatives to bargain for fair price of their produces.
Government might encourage establishment of farmers’ cooperatives to ensure
fair price of their produces. To make such cooperatives successful, top-down
approach by the influentials must be avoided. Investment in agricultural research
should as well be raised to at least 2% of GDP to help generate technologies to
cope with climate change hazards and disseminate such technologies at farmer’s
level
Keywords: Crop agriculture, challenges and opportunities.
Introduction
Bangladesh economy draws its main strength from agriculture sector. The sector
contributes 19.10% to GDP (at current prices) and employs 50.28% of the labour
force. Despite increase in the shares of fisheries, livestock, and forestry, crop
sub-sector alone accounts for 60.83% share of agricultural GDP (BBS, 2008).
Crop agriculture in Bangladesh is, however, constrained by a number of
challenges every year. Major challenges include 1) Loss of Arable Land, 2)
Population Growth, 3) Climate Changes, 4-6) Inadequate Management Practices
(Fertilizer, Water, and Pests & Diseases), 7) Lack of Quality Seeds, and 8-10)
Inadequate Credit Support to Farmers, Unfair Price of Produces, and Insufficient
Investment in Research. Bangladesh has lost about l million ha of arable land
from 1983 to 1996. Virtually, no step has been taken by the government to arrest
this loss. The land use policy prepared by the government several years back has
not yet been implemented. Population growth poses another great threat to crop
productivity. Besides, crop agriculture in Bangladesh has become regularly
vulnerable to the hazards of climate change–flood, drought, salinity in particular.
In addition, poor management practices, especially those of pests and diseases,
fertilizer, water and irrigation have largely contributed to significant decline in
crop productivity. Small and marginal farmers that constitute majority of farm
population are constrained by poor financial resources and cannot, therefore,
afford high management costs of high input technology.
Major objective of this review article is to discuss the challenges of crop
agriculture of Bangladesh and suggest possible opportunities to address the issue
that may assist the policy makers to develop policy guidelines.
Challenges
Loss of arable land
Bangladesh has lost about 1 million ha of productive arable land from 1983 to
1996 (BBS, 1999). That is about 80,000 ha of agricultural land per year are going
out of crop production. Major factors responsible for land loss are urbanization,
human settlement, building of infrastructure, and river erosion. The loss indeed is
very alarming and therefore, needs to be addressed immediately. The government
prepared a land use policy to stop this trend. But no step has so far been taken to
arrest this diversion. Available statistics also indicates that about 1 million ha
char lands are available in the country that could be used for growing crops like
groundnut, sesame, mustard, maize, millets, etc. These productive lands are often
occupied by the influentials who normally belong to political parties and
administration. Recently, Honourable State Minster for Housing and Public
Works declared to use khas lands for housing programme.
Population growth
Another major challenge to agriculture is the increase in the growth of
population. Growth rate of population at present stands at 1.26% (BER, 2008-
2009). Population is increasing @ 2 million per year and the total population
would be around 233 million by 2050 if the current growth rate continues. Such a
growth rate of a country of 1,43,000 sq. km is viewed as a great challenge not
only to different economic development activities but also as crisis to
accommodation, environment and meeting other basic needs (food, education,
and health). When the population growth demands more number of workers at
field level, the number has considerably been reduced. Furthermore, birth control
materials are not produced in the country and the supply is often inadequate
compared to demands. Another major problem in population control lies with the
religious fundamentalists. It may not be irrelevant to mention that different
political parties are not interested to control population in the fear of losing vote
banks of the fundamentalists
Climate change
Atmospheric CO2, CH4, SO2, N2O, etc. are mainly responsible for temperature
increase resulting in the rise of sea level. Temperature rise by 1.00
C would
inundate 18% area of Bangladesh as indicated by different studies. At the same
time, the country is affected frequently by flood, drought, cyclone, and salinity
due to climate change. As a result, soil fertility, crop productivity, and food
security would be seriously threatened. Climate change has also accelerated
hunger, poverty, malnutrition and incidence of diseases, especially in developing
countries (IPCC, 2007). It is basically the poor that would be worst victims of
climate change. Profit driven mode of production by corporate agencies and their
over extraction and consumption of fossil fuels (coal, oil) has also hastened
global warming.
In Bangladesh, about 1 million ha of the coastal region is saline. But very
few varieties are available for combating salinity. Drought affects annually 2.5
million ha in kharif and 1.2 million ha in dry season. Kharif drought affects T.
aman rice severely. Besides, about 2.6 m ha are affected by flood in a normal
year (Z. Karim, 1997). The devastating flood of 2004 inundated 40 districts and
caused considerable loss of crops and human life. But very limited technologies
are available that are tolerant to flood and drought.
According to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2001),
coastal area of Bangladesh may go under saline water by 2050. Due to the rise in
temperature, crop production will be reduced by about 30%. Climate change,
especially temperature rise would decrease the yield of boro rice by 55-62% and
wheat by 61% by 2050 in Bangladesh (New Age, 2008). Frequent felling of
green trees by the influentials, especially in coastal belts for building shipyards
has also become a threat to climate change.
Imbalanced use of fertilizers
Farmers normally use urea in recommended doses. Because of high prices, they
apply P and K fertilizers at the rates that are far below the recommended amount.
Chemical fertilizers are not normally integrated with organic manures. It is thus
evident that farmers virtually do not use balanced fertilizers that are necessary for
high productivity. A task force of the Ministry of Agriculture recently stated that
the productivity of crops for the last few decades or so has either stagnated or
declined even though fertilizer use in the country has almost increased three folds
(G. Rahman, 2004).
Inefficient water use
Water use efficiency in Bangladesh is extremely low. On the average, 25-30% of
irrigation water is used by crops and the rest is lost due to faulty flood irrigation
system (Z. Karim, 1997; M. Mondal, 2005). Conservation of rain water during
monsoon is virtually non-existent that could be utilized for irrigating crops
during dry season. Studies show that irrigation with surface water instead of
underground water might reduce the vulnerability to hazards of climate change.
Irrigation cost in Bangladesh is relatively high due mainly to high price of diesel.
It is to be mentioned that more than 80% irrigation pumps in the country are
diesel operated.
References
Bangladesh Economic Review (BER). 2009. Economic Division, Ministry of Finance.
Executive Summary. 2007-2008. Annual Report, Bangladesh Agricultural Research
Council (BARC).
M. A. M. Miah, et. al. 2005. Returns to investment on research and extension of high
yielding winter tomatoes in Bangladesh. Bangladesh J. Agril. Research 30 (4): 538-
545
M. Nurul Alam et. al. 2005. Development and Management of improved technology in
increasing productivity challenges and opportunity of agriculture in 21st century.
Agricultural Employees Conference and Technology Fair. Ministry of Agriculture.
Mohammad H. Mondal. 2005. Challenges and Opportunities of sustainable crop
production in Bangladesh. Eighth Biennial Agronomy Convention. Bangladesh
Society of Agronomy.
