The third largest sector in terms of its GDP (Gross Domestic Product) share after the manufacturing and service, the agriculture's contribution to the economy has been on the decline over the past decade. In fact, during the period, its contribution has fallen from the previous 17 per cent to 12.6 per cent in 2020, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statics (BBS). Since the sector's role is crucial to the country's food security, the challenges now facing agriculture from burgeoning population and climate change call for meeting those with urgency. The added concern at this point is that the amount of arable land is decreasing rather than increasing. According to an estimate, between 1970 and 2019, the amount of arable land has shrunk from 8.837 million hectares to 7.967 million hectares.
Under the circumstances, to meet the growing demand for food grains and other agricultural produces, the best option left is to increase productivity of the land available at the moment. Now, the ratio of Bangladesh agriculture's output to the average of labour and capital inputs, or what is otherwise called Total Factor Productivity (TFP), being at 1.23, one can say that it is up to the mark, since the global average is at 1.18. Even so, it is still below India's at 1.24 and China's 1.4, which means, the productivity levels of their agriculture are better than ours. So, our agriculture's productivity cannot be said to be satisfactory. This is for the simple reason that it is one of the world's highest recipients of public finance. The reasons are far too obvious. Input costs, for example, for irrigation water in Bangladesh agriculture, are very high compared to the standard. This is mostly due to the famers' misplaced notion about water-use.
Small wonder that it adds to the production cost at the expense of efficiency and, hence, of productivity. To get around the shortcomings, the focus should be turned to modern agricultural practices including improved water resource management, efficient application of irrigation water, inorganic fertilisers, pest control measures, etc. At the moment there is no authority dedicated to the task of monitoring agricultural productivity but it should get the priority. This is despite the fact that the government has no dearth of institutions to help agriculture in general. Side by side with it, extension efforts need to be enhanced to introduce new varieties of HYV rice from among some 38 developed so far by the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI).That is because the farmers' choice over the years have been limited to a handful of HYV rice types including BR11 and BR1. This has led to the use of the same kind of rice seeds over and over again to the detriment of soil fertility and hence its productivity.
A lack of crop diversity is another contributing factor to the low productivity of land. All these and other issues related to the state of the country's agriculture came under the review of a recent Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)-initiated virtual conference in the city. What came out of the webinar is that the per capita investment in Bangladesh's agriculture at US$16 is one of the lowest in the South and Southeast Asian region. So is the case with per capita value addition. Evidently, what it all boils down to is the urgency of increased investment and budgetary allocations for agriculture and agricultural research. Another imperative is to remove malnutrition through adoption of beneficial policies in agriculture.
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