Farmers live up to their task of closing food gap
Monday, 10 November 2008
THE farmers of the country have been achieving miracles year after year amidst all the hurdles they have to face. Apart from the usual natural hazards, they also face the manmade ones like scarcity of fertilisers, seeds, pesticides and irrigation water. In fact, fertiliser is an issue of regular complaint from the farmers. Due to scarcity and resulting exorbitant price of fertilisers in the market, the cash-strapped farmers have to go through untold hardship to achieve their target of satisfactory yield of crops every year. So, in a word, the farmers of the country are doing it all practically unaided.
The country, after a long time, was face to face with a situation of acute food shortage last fiscal. The reasons for this were also not unknown. The two successive floods and finally the cyclone Sidr dealt the telling blows on the farmers' capacity to withstand the odds. The problem was further compounded, as the international food grain market, too, turned volatile. Moreover, the traditional exporters of rice, too, became conservative about releasing their surplus in the market. The result was a price spiral of food grains and the widespread fear of acute supply shortage in the days to come. So, the price of food grain started to rise by leaps and bounds. The unscrupulous traders hoarded it and many extra-careful consumers went into panic buying of rice and other food grains.
To cut a long story short, after many years, the government and the consumers, in general, were faced with the spectre of what looked like a near famine condition. But even in the face of such literally insuperable walls of difficulty, the farmers of the country remained undaunted and tried their best to narrow down the food gap through bumper boro production. What should reassure us is that the farmers this year came up against fewer major difficulties of natural origin, except the flash floods in 20 northern and central districts of the country that damaged transplanted Aman rice over some 166,000 hectares of land. As a result, the government had to reduce the overall target of Aman production this year by about 700,000 tons and set it at 13 million tons. After an assessment of the situation of Aman production on the ground, the government is hopeful of record yield of Aman rice this fiscal. With expected record output of Aman, which, reportedly, has been possible due to the use of HYV seeds, and the expected boro yield at 18 million tons, Aus at 2.2 million tons and wheat at 0.8 million tons, the government this year is confident of making it to the desired target of 34 million tons of food grains.
Considering the overall situation, the government has strong reasons for optimism this year. It is hoped that such optimism will also be reflected through the behaviour of the food grain price in the market. If truth be told, our farmers are doing their best with their backbreaking labour and little support to keep the market full of food grains. But some middlemen are always coming in the way rendering the price behaviour uncertain. The upshot of it all is that in spite of our farmers' efforts to meet the production target, consumers are hardly getting the benefits due to erratic market situation. Despite everything, the reassuring aspect of the news on the food production front is that, the spectre of acute food grain shortage will not stare us in the face like it had in the previous fiscal. It is hoped that the government will spare no effort to take this opportunity to enhance its stock of food grain to save it for a rainy day.
The country, after a long time, was face to face with a situation of acute food shortage last fiscal. The reasons for this were also not unknown. The two successive floods and finally the cyclone Sidr dealt the telling blows on the farmers' capacity to withstand the odds. The problem was further compounded, as the international food grain market, too, turned volatile. Moreover, the traditional exporters of rice, too, became conservative about releasing their surplus in the market. The result was a price spiral of food grains and the widespread fear of acute supply shortage in the days to come. So, the price of food grain started to rise by leaps and bounds. The unscrupulous traders hoarded it and many extra-careful consumers went into panic buying of rice and other food grains.
To cut a long story short, after many years, the government and the consumers, in general, were faced with the spectre of what looked like a near famine condition. But even in the face of such literally insuperable walls of difficulty, the farmers of the country remained undaunted and tried their best to narrow down the food gap through bumper boro production. What should reassure us is that the farmers this year came up against fewer major difficulties of natural origin, except the flash floods in 20 northern and central districts of the country that damaged transplanted Aman rice over some 166,000 hectares of land. As a result, the government had to reduce the overall target of Aman production this year by about 700,000 tons and set it at 13 million tons. After an assessment of the situation of Aman production on the ground, the government is hopeful of record yield of Aman rice this fiscal. With expected record output of Aman, which, reportedly, has been possible due to the use of HYV seeds, and the expected boro yield at 18 million tons, Aus at 2.2 million tons and wheat at 0.8 million tons, the government this year is confident of making it to the desired target of 34 million tons of food grains.
Considering the overall situation, the government has strong reasons for optimism this year. It is hoped that such optimism will also be reflected through the behaviour of the food grain price in the market. If truth be told, our farmers are doing their best with their backbreaking labour and little support to keep the market full of food grains. But some middlemen are always coming in the way rendering the price behaviour uncertain. The upshot of it all is that in spite of our farmers' efforts to meet the production target, consumers are hardly getting the benefits due to erratic market situation. Despite everything, the reassuring aspect of the news on the food production front is that, the spectre of acute food grain shortage will not stare us in the face like it had in the previous fiscal. It is hoped that the government will spare no effort to take this opportunity to enhance its stock of food grain to save it for a rainy day.