The government will continue subsidising agriculture for food security come what may, Matia Chowdhury reaffirmed government stand Wednesday despite opposition from international donors.
"Donors oppose government's subsidy programme. But we will continue to subsidise country's agriculture sector to make it self-sufficient," said the agriculture minister.
Matia Chowdhury made the observations while inaugurating an international workshop on 'Evidence-Based Policy Options for Food and Nutrition Security in Bangladesh'.
The donor countries and agencies argued against the subsidies because they thought it would be too expensive. "But what they do in their own countries?" She posed the question to the donors.
The minister put up a counter-argument that agriculture is the backbone of the economy and so the government would support the farmers for the sake of making agriculture more productive and self-reliant.
"As a result of providing subsidy on agriculture, Bangladesh is going to export rice for the first time," she said about the benefit being reaped out of the agricultural subsidies.
"We will export rice to Sri Lanka soon and it is our great achievement," she told the international meet on food security, urging all, including the development partners, involved in agriculture to concentrate more on how to make Bangladesh self-sufficient in food production.
"We will subsidize the agriculture, but reduce our subsidies on import of pesticides," said the minister.
She mentioned that the import cost of pesticides was reduced by Tk 1680 million last fiscal as the agricultural plants now grow up resistance against pests.
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a US-based international agricultural research centre, organized the daylong workshop at the Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel.
The avowed motto was to work out policy guidelines and methodologies with a view to fighting against hunger and strengthening country's food and nutrition security.
The inaugural function was also addressed, among others, by Food Minister Quamrul Islam, USAID mission director Janina Jaruzelski, IFPRI director-general Dr Shenggen Fan and IFPRI's chief of party Dr Akhter Ahmed.
Listing various initiatives the government has taken to strengthen agriculture, the minister said that the country had achieved tremendous progress in food production and agriculture over the years.
"However, our country increasingly faces challenges of rapid population growth, urbanisation and climate change," she told her audience.
Considering all this, Matia said, the government has undertaken farmer-friendly measures and is providing subsidies to them with the aim of increasing crop production in the country.
She said the government has given priority to innovation of new varieties of crops, tolerant to adverse climatic conditions like floods, droughts and salinity.
"Policy research must be prioritized for the development of agriculture."
Despite the challenges, Food Minister Quamrul Islam said, country's rice production increased to 33.8 million tonnes in 2012-13 from 29.8 million tonnes in the year 2007-08.
"We need to provide price incentives for domestic food producers, retain adequate public food-grain stock to offer consumers price support during shocks and enhance food-based safety nets," he added.
In her speech USAID mission director Janina Jaruzelski highly praised Bangladesh for its amazing resilience and fortitude over the years, overcoming numerous natural disasters and other challenges to lead the population and become self-sufficient in producing rice.
"This is a huge accomplishment," she said.
However, to attain true food security, improve health and stop the vicious cycle of poverty, poor nutrition and stunting, Bangladesh still needs to diversify agriculture production both to enhance rural incomes and improve nutritional value of the diets of the poor, she added.
Food, nutrition, health and agriculture experts from home and abroad presented paper on evidence-based agricultural policy formulation, policy options for seed-sector development, Bangladesh rice stock policy and transformation of fish value chain.
The workshop also witnessed an overview of the major accomplishments of the Policy Research and Strategy Support Program (PRSSP).
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