Farmland depletion amid fast growing population

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Shahiduzzaman KhanWith the world population hitting 7.0 billion mark this week, poor countries like Bangladesh are faced with the daunting task of managing a huge number of population being born every year. The country's population was 75 million in 1971, but in less than 40 years it has crossed 150 million. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimate, population now stands at 16.22 million. With the world population currently at 7.0 billion and UNFPA and its partners launching a campaign called '7.0 billion people -- 7.0 billion actions,' it might look like an achievement for the developed countries, but definitely it is just a cause for worries for a land-starved and disaster-ridden country like Bangladesh. Long-term outlook for Bangladesh is not that much encouraging as unplanned growth of population is further complicating the process of meeting the demand for food, basic health requirements and educational facilities -- triggering unemployment and social unrest. The prospect is horrifying as resources are outrunning habitants. Trees are being chopped down for fuel at a regular interval. Climatic disruption in recent time, followed by salinity intrusion, shrinking farmlands and crop losses, has added to the woes of the people. What is alarming is that the country with the world's highest density of population is fast losing arable land due to growing industrialisation and rapid encroachment of human habitat on farming areas. Bangladesh is losing 8000 hectares of farm land every year from its original 13 million hectares of cropland due to urbanisation, industrialisation, unplanned rural housing and infrastructure buildings. The country's fast growing population is now looking for new land to build homes while entrepreneurs are going deep into the countryside to set up factories. Agriculture accounts for only 21 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) although the sector employs around 50 per cent of the national workforce. Theoretically speaking, there would be no cultivable land left in Bangladesh in 50 years if lands are taken away for non-farm purposes at the current annual rate. Experts say if the trend is not reversed now, the country would permanently lose its food security, making its poor population more vulnerable to volatile international commodity prices. In order to reverse this trend, the government has banned use of arable land for purposes other than agriculture. This is no doubt a laudable step. A high-level committee recommended that the factories and educational institutions that have already been built should now go vertical, instead of grabbing more arable land. But the government is failing to monitor how much arable land is being transferred for use other than agricultural purposes. Indeed, the dwindling size of farms, rise in landlessness and constant depletion of farmland are posing formidable threats to Bangladesh's agriculture, increasing poverty and trapping many ultra-poor people in a vicious circle. The average farm size has been reduced to less than 0.6 hectares and the percentage of landless people stands at 58 in a country where nearly 80 per cent of the ultra-poor live in rural areas. The country's problem of landlessness has emerged as an international issue sometime back with the non-functioning of a rule-based global trading regime that has deprived Bangladesh of required support to overcome the nagging domestic problems of food and agriculture. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief referred this critical issue at an international forum, pointing out that in the world's poorest corners, including Bangladesh, land is getting divided through inheritance and farm sizes are getting smaller and smaller with the passing of every generation. It is a matter of great regret that worries about farmland depletion at an alarming rate have fallen into deaf ears, while calls for ensuring optimum utilisation of arable land and bringing fallow land under cultivation remain in rhetoric alone. Successive governments fixed all their focus on higher production of rice, while import bills for fuel, cooking oils and pulses continued to inflate due to global price volatility in recent years. A long-pending suggestion to bring slight changes in crop pattern for diversifying agriculture remains unattended by policymakers. Overall, rice cultivation covers about 80 per cent of Bangladesh's total cultivated area, though self-sufficiency in food still remains a far cry. Since rice is the staple food and a politically-sensitive product, agricultural policymakers during successive regimes concentrated almost solely on rice production and cared little about other major items. Some holistic approaches were planned, but those were never implemented. Bangladesh could easily utilise regions such as Barind tracts, coastal zone and Sylhet haors to grow more Rabi crops comprising pulses and oil seeds to significantly reduce imports. Experts say an integrated crop management package may be launched by designing agricultural zones based on weather and soil conditions for increasing agricultural production. It is also worrying to find that government expenditure on agricultural research has been steadily declining in Bangladesh. Allocation for agricultural research should be raised to 2.0 per cent from 0.2 per cent of the agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) to reduce the dependence on imports. The government should allocate more resources to rice research. This should at least be 0.4 per cent of the agricultural GDP. Investing more on agricultural research is vital for Bangladesh since it is losing cropland quite fast. At present, the production capacity of cropland is less than 50 per cent due to lack in farmers' knowledge and unavailability of resources at the proper time. The farmers have a lack of knowledge as they use age-old seedlings, unhealthy seeds and imbalanced fertiliser. All these are causing a serious setback for efforts to boost production. szkhan@dhaka.net