Farm households decline by 14pc in a decade

The World Food Day 2014 will be observed globally today (Thursday) recognising the worldwide phenomenon of hunger with the theme 'family farming: feeding the world, caring the earth'.
The theme depicts the obligation of household agriculture for better food security as well as for safer foods.
Hundreds of NGOs and government oganisations in the country will organise seminars and symposiums on food security in observance of the day.
But, the alarming matter is that the country's agricultural households are declining gradually.
Experts expressed their concern that the reducing trend of farm households might create threat to the food security of the country in coming days.
They prescribed for making agriculture lucrative by providing logical incentives and by ensuring profitable prices for farm produce.  
"Hundreds of farmers leaving their ancestral profession and heading towards towns and cities every day as agriculture can no more ensure their living," farm economist Golam Hafiz Kennedy said.
He said decades of price and social deprivations, and increasing commercial opportunities in the cities are forcing a large number of farmers for leaving farming.
He said the number of farm households is reducing gradually which is frightening for the food security in the country as 1.9 million people are adding to the population every year.
The country has hardly achieved self-sufficiency in rice and potato and still an import-dependent one on most of the commodities including wheat, sugar, pulse, edible oil, spices and even for fish, he commented.
He also said that the plunge in farm households is indicating that the government programme 'One home, one farm (Akti Bari Akti Khamar)' has failed in the country.
He said the programme could be a revolutionary one if the government would pay serious attention to it.
According to the state-run Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), the country's farm households stand at 15.3 million now which was 178.3 million in 2001--- a 14.18 per cent reduction in a decade.
Ethno-biologist and agriculture expert Kamal Pasha said the prices of inputs including fertliser, seed, irrigation, ploughing have been increasing gradually but the farmers are not getting price compared to the increase in production costs.
"The result of the consequences are that hundreds of farmers are being forced to sell their lands and those are going to the hands of corporations and big businessmen," said Pasha, who teaches anthropology at Rajshahi University.
He also pointed out that the corporations are producing food crops whose market prices are higher and the landless farmers are not able to buy those.
"The commercial agriculture is also encouraging cash crops (non-food crops) which is threatening the food security not only of marginal and landless farmers, but also the limited-income generations of towns and cities," he said.
According to Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) and Directorate General of Food (DGoF), the country has self-sufficiency only in two major crops -- rice and potato.
Experts expressed that sufficiency in only rice and potato, two key sources of carbohydrate, can't ensure sustainable food security with an import-based supply of vitamin, protein and other mineral and milk-rich food items.
The country needs to adopt a dynamic agricultural policy giving thrust on proper use of modern technology to ensure increased production of vitamin, protein and mineral-rich food items.
To feed 1.9 million additional people, being added to the population annually, the country has to adopt time-befitting policies and research initiatives targeting the farm households.
Chairman of Subaltern Communication Research Centre (SCRC) Delowar Jahan said: "The agricultural households should be held to feed our future generation and they should be protected as food can be non-exchangeable item anytime in crisis periods as witnessed in the past."   

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