It is no overstatement to say that a silent revolution has occurred in the realm of agriculture in the country. A similar achievement was noted under the Awami league government in the nineties. But fruits of it were not sustained by the government that followed. However, the incumbent Awami League led government staged an even more forceful comeback in all areas of agriculture in the country under its second tenure. Thus, for the first time the country has become completely self sufficient in the production of the basic staple, rice.
Government has had no need to import foodgrains during the most part of the present decade. Milled rice production was set at 35.2 million tonnes in 2019-20. As it is, Bangladesh is now poised to become a net exporter of rice very soon and emerge as an exporter of foodgrain in international markets due to the current surplus position it enjoys in producing rice. The present foodgrain reserve maintained by the government is a comfortable 10 lakhs and 77 thousand tons. All these are clearly suggestive of the great strides in increasing food production and enhancing food security in recent years. Bangladesh would be much worse during this pandemic if it did not have a comfortable supply of staple food grain and also good production of cereals and other crops notwithstanding the pandemic.
But the attainments just did not fall from the sky. A great deal of patient and innovative policy making and their implementation have gone into making the same possible. From the supply of vital inputs at fair prices to farmers in time to subsidization, government could very successfully execute a wide number of policies to make the silent revolution in agriculture possible.
For example, as a result of giving subsidies, the motivation and ability of farmers to increase production was raised that led to higher production. The government’s agencies were able to reduce prices of fertilizers by nearly half in this period. The price of urea was reduced by 70 and 78 per cent through several policy decisions. Besides, government ensured irrigation. Last year 385.70 kilometres of irrigation channels were excavated or rexcavated. The building of an extensive network of cross dams, hydrolic structures, irrigation canals and artesian wells, significantly aided the process. 61 high yielding varieties of seeds have been discovered and some of these have been popularized at field levels. BADC was able to produce and distribute some 1,54,213 metric tons of seeds of the high yielding varieties. These efforts led to significant increases in the production of various crops. The ever familiar picture of under productivity in the northern districts have given way to new features of bumper harvests bringing smiles to farmers in this area.
Prior to the take over by the present government, allocation for fertlizers and other inputs were was 3,900 crore Taka. The present government has progressively increased such allocations to 6,000 crore Taka. On the other hand, agricultural loans have increased and the terms and conditions for borrowing these have also become much lenient. The rates of interest for availing these loan have become nominal in most cases.
The good performance in agriculture must be maintained. Our agriculture production is no longer about subsistence. Beyond self-sufficiency, we are now the fourth-largest rice produce, second-largest in jute production, fourth-largest in mango production, third largest in vegetable production and fourth-largest in inland fisheries production in the world. We are decoding the genome of key crops and fruits to move further.
