Agriculture sector thrives despite challenges

Desk Report
Despite natural calamities like floods and drought and shrinking of farmland, the country has been witnessing a big success in the agriculture sector thanks to a rise in the production of rice, jute, vegetables and different food crops.
According to the World Bank, the rural economy, mostly driven by the agriculture, has been a powerful tool for poverty reduction in Bangladesh.
Agriculture accounted for 90 per cent of the reduction in poverty between 2005 and 2010, it said.
Bangladesh has made commendable progress in achieving food security, despite frequent natural disasters and population growth and scarcity of land, according to a study of the global lender conducted in 2017.
With one of the fastest rates of productivity growth in the world since 1995 (averaging 2.7 per cent per year, second only to China), Bangladesh’s agricultural sector has benefited from a sound and consistent policy framework backed up by substantial public investments in technology, rural infrastructure and human capital, it said.
Bangladesh has been a food surplus country over the past several years and through a gradual rise in rice production, the country has secured the
fourth top position among the
rice-producing countries in the world in 2016.
The country is currently the second largest producer of jute fibre. It stays ahead of its competitors in applying recent technological advancements in the agricultural sector.
Bangladesh is the largest exporter of jute fibre in the world and its share in jute export is more than 70 per cent.
The country also ranked third in vegetable production in 2016 while it ranked first in terms of increasing the acreage of vegetable farming.
Bangladesh ranked 8th in potato production, 7th in mango production, and 4th in tea production and 28th in fruit production in 2016.
Jute is the second most important fibre crops after cotton in the world and the main cash crop of Bangladesh.
Around 4 to 4.5 million small and subsistence farmers earn their livelihood from jute.
The production of jute was around 60-65 lakh bails (1.0 to 1.7 million tonnes) in the 1980s but it dropped to 44 to 45 lakh bails (0.79 to 0.85 million tonnes) from 1090s onward.
However, jute production been increasing from 2010 due to favourable policies adopted by the government.
Rice production has hit the all-time high in 2017-18 fiscal since the country’s independence, according to data from Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
The production of rice increased to 362 lakh tonnes in FY 18 from 337 lakh tonnes in FY 17. Rice production stood at 346 lakh tonnes in FY 16, 347 lakh tonnes in FY 15, 343 lakh tonnes in FY 14, 338 lakh tonnes in FY 13 and FY 12 and 335 lakh tonnes in FY 11.
Rice production increased to 313 lakh tonnes in 2008-9 fiscal from 289 lakh tonnes in 2007-8 fiscal. Rice yield maintained the upward trend till FY 15 when the output hit 347 lakh tonnes. But rice production decreased in the next two years.
Boro and Aman yields helped increase the paddy production as the Boro production reached 195 lakh tonnes and Aman production hit 139 lakh tonnes in FY 18.
Mohammad Mohshin, Director General (DG) of Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE), told the daily sun that rice production declined in FY 17 due to floods but farmers increased the acreage of Boro paddy in the following year.
Favourable weather condition, higher acreage and quality seeds help increase the rice production in FY 18, he said.
Country’s dependency on rice import is expected to drastically reduce to a fourth from a record import of the staple – 36 lakh metric tons (MT) in 2017-18 marketing year (MY) to just eight lakh MT in 2018-19 MY.
According to a recent report of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Bangladesh’s total rice production is forecast to increase to 3.47 crore tonnes in 2018-19 MY (May-April) from 3.26 crore tonnes in 2017-18 MY.
USDA largely attributed a higher Boro production for this year-on-year output surge.