Irrigation expands as equipment market liberalised

The agricultural sector holds the key to Bangladesh's economic growth and development although the sector's share to GDP (gross domestic product) has drastically declined from 50 per cent in the 1970s to below 20 per cent in the recent years. Currently, the sector absorbs about half of the labour force and serves as the perennial source of food security for the people. The expansion of the non-farm sector also owes much to the growth of this sector.  But agricultural performance in general and food grain production, in particular, have long been faced with two major problems.
Firstly, the agrarian structure is dominated by small and marginal farmers with nearly two-thirds of the rural households operating holdings of less than half of a hectare and more than four-fifths operating less than one hectare. Again, land is concentrated in a few hands and the holding size has significantly been reduced over time. Empirical data tend to show that one-tenths of the rural households control more than one-thirds of the total land and the average size of owned and cultivated land reached 75 and 121 decimals respectively.  This type of agrarian structure is believed to breed inequity and bedevil massive mechanisation and economies of scale. Perhaps for these reasons, the early critics of the Green Revolution in the 1970s considered the agrarian structure as constraint to the growth of productive forces in agriculture.
The second problem is related to the availability of water for irrigation purposes. In the absence of irrigation facilities, acute scarcity of water developed especially during January-April to result in only one paddy crop grown under rain-fed conditions - mostly traditional, low-yielding varieties, and dependent on the whims of the nature.  In a regime of high fertility and large household size, this kind of monsoon-dependent mono-rice crop often led to a famine-like situation. On the other hand, there was little room for complacency even in the monsoon with abundant water as floods tend to inundate vast tracts of crop fields.  Of course at this juncture, regular and adequate rainfall could possibly provide some relief to the reeling farmers but that was not the case. The rainfall varies from 1,200mm in the extreme west to over 5000mm in the northeast with an average of 2000mm for the country as a whole. More importantly, about four-fifths of that rainfall occurs during the monsoon spanning from June to September.
In the post-monsoon (October-November) and winter period (December-February), only 10 per cent of the annual rainfall gets more erratic and unreliable in the subsequent pre-monsoon period (March-May) with an average of 10 per cent. By and large, there has been serious seasonal lack of water depending on the presence and duration of the monsoon. Water is very scarce in the south and northwest region during winter. Excessive water logging in the rainy season and inadequate moisture in soil in the dry season (January to April) adversely affects the production of the perennial paddy crop.  It is thus not difficult to realise that in this agro-climatic condition, any water market could hardly be developed in rural Bangladesh. Whatever the amount of water was available on the ground, it was bestowed by the nature's whims.
  However, the effective demand for irrigation water began to surge with the advent of the Green Revolution in the 1960s - particularly since 1967. In fact, the spread of modern and water-intensive paddy in the Boro season (winter season paddy crop) spearheaded the demand for irrigation water. As demand began to develop, the price of water soon soared in the wake of weak supply but the yield rate of the modern rice at about three times more than traditional ones possibly pulled the demand despite high price. Among the modes of irrigation, surface water could possibly be the best source but lifting by indigenous method was very limited to low-lying areas only. Besides, falling flow of water in rivers and canals made it difficult to use surface water for irrigation. In consequence, extraction of ground water through mechanised devices remained the major driver for dry season crops (especially the HYVs). In a country with one of the highest density of population (nearly 1,000 per sq.km), an agrarian structure dominated by landless and marginal farms and average holding of 0.48 ha, food security largely leaned on the availability of the water-intensive dry season Boro rice. After decades of twists and turns, more than 70 per cent of crop production in winter season now is Boro rice. The demand for both surface and ground water has been on steep rise since the advent of HYVs in the dry season which accounts for roughly 60 per cent of the total demand for water.
Bangladesh experienced rapid expansion of irrigation facilities after the policy changes mentioned just before. In the subsequent periods, after liberalisation of equipment markets, considerable investment has been made in developing ground water irrigation. As can be observed, there has been a steep rise in the growth of irrigation equipment over the last few decades. Most of the equipment are STWs (shallow tube wells) requiring relatively small amount of capital. It can further be observed that the turning point took place in 1989 when reforms for deregulation, privatisation of input market and liberalisation of imports of irrigation apparatus underwent in full swing. In later periods, STWs stole the lead at the behest of private sector investment - a lead earlier captured by DTWs (deep tube wells) and LLPs (low-lift pumps). During the last two decades and a half, the number of STWs swelled by 13 times  providing water to 3.2 million out of 5.0 million cultivated lands -  roughly two-thirds of cultivated land get water from only STWs. Out of 15 million farms, 1.0 million farms have own STWs. Since 1990s, irrigation extension has been mostly led by STWs. The price of STWs fell from US$ 67 to $26 during the last two decades. This has been possible due to cheaper sources as compared to expensive but long-lasting machines imported by the BADC from Japan. Finally, owners or not, 80 per cent of the marginal and small farmers have been using irrigation water for growing HYVs in their plots of land.
The writer is Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.
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