Even with a decreasing birth rate, up to two million people add up each year to Bangladesh's 160 million population because of an already large population base. It requires an additional 0.5 million tonnes of food to feed the yearly addition.
With the current farm production stagnating, the government plans to break the yield ceiling by embarking upon a new national agriculture policy, drafted five years after the existing one adopted in 2013.
Agriculture Ministry officials told UNB that the proposed National Agriculture Policy 2018 elaborated ways and means to augment farm production in the country to meet the growing needs of an increasing population.
To elicit views from the people of all strata Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC), the central body of all farm research stations in the country, is hosting a meeting today (Sunday) before the government finalises the new national agriculture policy.
The draft policy envisages a plan to pursue frontier sciences including agricultural biotechnology, and invest more on research and development (R&D) to break the current yield ceiling and go for achieving higher growth momentum.
The proposed National Agriculture Policy 2018 got it on records that moves would be taken to stop conversion of farmlands as the country is losing its fertile crop lands to urbanisation, industrialisation, brick kilns and to illegal land grabbers. It emphasises the use of more surface water and reduce pressures on groundwater for farm irrigation otherwise ecological balance will be in great danger.
The new policy guidelines have got clear mandates for inviting the private sector to invest in agricultural research. It expresses firm resolve to tap the full potential of Bangladeshi scientists' unlocking genome maps of jute so that better breeds can be developed.
It takes the climate change impacts on farm productivity into serious consideration and stresses developing crop varieties, which would be able to withstand stresses like drought, cold, salinity and submergence.
The proposed policy keeps provision of using modern IT technology and other advanced knowledge to pursue precision farming, more mechanization and elimination of hazardous practices like employing of children in pesticide application.
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