Researches that help us to achieve food autarky
Friday, 21 November 2008
Syed Fattahul Alim
To feed the growing millions in the country has remained a big challenge before the governments of the past and the present. There is no reason to think that the challenge will be fully met in the near future either. The traditional methods of farming and crop management practices have so far been feeding the population. However, it would be wrong to deny that the products of agricultural research that presented the farmers of the country with the higher yielding varieties (HYV) of rice have also helped the farmers to grow more food per acre than it was possible to achieve through using the local strains and varieties of seeds in the past. But the introduction of the high yielding varieties of rice that enhanced the yield per acre has also not come entirely without any price. For one needs to add inputs like chemical fertilisers, irrigated water and pesticides to ensure the higher yields of rice. All these factors also contribute to the overall rise in the cost of production of rice. However, the common people have been grudgingly getting used to the rising cost of food grains. Even so, they as well as the government were becoming growingly complacent seeing that the farmers were proving themselves resilient in the face of all the vagaries of nature and that the serious food shortages that the older generation witnessed in the pre-independence days or in the years immediately after the independence were no more a cause for immediate concern before the population.
Of late, such complacency, too, has been shattered when the price of food grains broke all past records. And it was also not really the price hike that was the main reason for fear. Frequent visitations by natural calamities like floods and cyclones had damaged the standing crops and then uprooted the farmers from their homesteads as well as destroyed their remaining resources. To pile on the woes of the people, globally there was a sharp rise in the price of the food grains-a situation that persuaded the traditional food grains exporters to stop selling their surplus in the market in order that they that might earn greater profit in the future by selling it at a still higher price.
It was an exceptional turn of events when the domestic and the international factors were engaged, as it were, in a big plot to deny the population of Bangladesh the main staple they cannot live without.
However, the country's farmers, so severely battered though they were by the natural catastrophes, again rose to the occasion and allayed the growing fears of starvation and famine with their bumper production.
Meanwhile, the global scenario has been overtaken by yet another development of greater and deeper significance. The ongoing recession has put a sudden hard brake on the runaway price hike in the international market. To be more exact, the unbridled price hike has now been replaced by its diametrical opposite, a steep slide in the overall price index in the highly industrialised nations of North America and Europe. In Bangladesh, however, the essential commodities market is yet to show any impact of the big shift taking place in the global marketplace.
The raging recession in the advanced world with attending fall in consumer demand and plummeting price index has not, so far, brought any good news for Bangladesh. The steep fall in the prices of all conceivable commodities including those of the food grains in the international marketplace looks lost on our dealers in essential commodities, especially food grains. Because, the local importers are not in any rush to import food grains taking advantage of neither the falling prices in the international market, nor the enhanced facilities for import provided by the local banks. As a consequence, the prices of food grains and other essential commodities have not shown any significant change for the better in the meanwhile.
Therefore, the challenge facing the government and the farmers to grow more food grains, especially rice, to feed the increased number of people in the coming days is still remaining as big as it has been before. But how are we then going to achieve this feat of supplying food to the growing number of population at an affordable price in the years to come?
To tell the truth, there is no ready answer to this question. What is being attempted to stress here is that complacency is a mindset that we must discard under any circumstances. And at the same time, we will have to take care that no stone is left unturned in our search for introducing new methods and techniques to meet our never ending challenge of feeding the population, whose number is growing inexorably every year.
Amid such hopes and fears, there is a piece of good news from the field of agricultural research in the country. The Rural Development Academy (RDA) of Bogra has achieved a great feat through a two years long special research project, "Good Seeds Initiative-1" funded by the Swiss Development Company (SDC). It has been proved through the project that the country will be able to produce 8.93 million tonnes of supplementary Boro and Aman rice annually by what it termed 'slightly-tweaked' version of the seed processing method our farmers have been using traditionally. Farmers of 10 villages in Naogaon, Bogra and Sirajganj districts witnessed the use of this new technique through video.
Such attempts at ensuring better yield of crops through slight variations in the traditional farm practices followed by our farmers is always welcome. However, it is too early to go overboard about this new breakthrough claimed by the RDA, because we are yet to go into real production of rice using this new production technology.
According to the food ministry, every year the farmers use some 443,000 tonnes of good quality seed to grow 27.94 million tonnes of Boro and Aman rice. But if farmers now go for this new 'tweaked' version of the traditional seed processing technology, it is claimed that, only 22, 155 tonnes of seed will be able to meet the total requirement of seed and thereby save some 553.90 million taka for the country.
The RDA project helped some 100 farmers in 10 villages of three northern districts to demonstrate that it is possible to achieve food self-sufficiency in the country through slightly varying the traditional farming practices. If the above mentioned method proves successful on a large scale in the field, it will undoubtedly go a long way in meeting our constant challenge of feeding yet greater size of the population with our own resources in an economical way and without going for a major overhaul of our farming technology.
This is not the first time that various research organisations including our farmers themselves have been coming up with such news to rejoice. In this connection, one may well recollect the research carried out by the non-governmental body Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service (RDRS) with the help of Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) to fight monga in the northern districts. That research again aimed to increase yield of rice without incurring any further cost in terms of seed or other inputs. The method however used hybrid variety of rice, where the shoots of the rice plants, called ratoons, growing from the stub of the plants after the previous harvest, were used to a grow a fresh batch of crop. In the experiment RDRS planted paddy ratoons in late June and harvested the crop on September 7.
However, one is not talking here about any new variety of rice. The farmers have already been using this hybrid variety. However, aided by this new research they would be able to get two crops successively. After harvesting the Boro crops, the farmers would plant the ratoons or shoots of the already cut down rice plants, in a field and continue to engage the farm workers in an uninterrupted fashion until winter crops and thereby help them escape the near famine condition known in the northern region as monga.
We have come a long from the IR8, the semi-dwarf rice variety that was introduced in the country in 1967. The green revolution that followed was the outcome of such small progresses made in the researches in seed, crop management and other farming practices. But since our land is limited, any growth in production has to be achieved vertically. And in the process, even if it is found that some research product has its flip-side, too, that should not in any way prevent us from continuing the research for finding still newer ways to acquire self-sufficiency in food production with our limited resources.
To feed the growing millions in the country has remained a big challenge before the governments of the past and the present. There is no reason to think that the challenge will be fully met in the near future either. The traditional methods of farming and crop management practices have so far been feeding the population. However, it would be wrong to deny that the products of agricultural research that presented the farmers of the country with the higher yielding varieties (HYV) of rice have also helped the farmers to grow more food per acre than it was possible to achieve through using the local strains and varieties of seeds in the past. But the introduction of the high yielding varieties of rice that enhanced the yield per acre has also not come entirely without any price. For one needs to add inputs like chemical fertilisers, irrigated water and pesticides to ensure the higher yields of rice. All these factors also contribute to the overall rise in the cost of production of rice. However, the common people have been grudgingly getting used to the rising cost of food grains. Even so, they as well as the government were becoming growingly complacent seeing that the farmers were proving themselves resilient in the face of all the vagaries of nature and that the serious food shortages that the older generation witnessed in the pre-independence days or in the years immediately after the independence were no more a cause for immediate concern before the population.
Of late, such complacency, too, has been shattered when the price of food grains broke all past records. And it was also not really the price hike that was the main reason for fear. Frequent visitations by natural calamities like floods and cyclones had damaged the standing crops and then uprooted the farmers from their homesteads as well as destroyed their remaining resources. To pile on the woes of the people, globally there was a sharp rise in the price of the food grains-a situation that persuaded the traditional food grains exporters to stop selling their surplus in the market in order that they that might earn greater profit in the future by selling it at a still higher price.
It was an exceptional turn of events when the domestic and the international factors were engaged, as it were, in a big plot to deny the population of Bangladesh the main staple they cannot live without.
However, the country's farmers, so severely battered though they were by the natural catastrophes, again rose to the occasion and allayed the growing fears of starvation and famine with their bumper production.
Meanwhile, the global scenario has been overtaken by yet another development of greater and deeper significance. The ongoing recession has put a sudden hard brake on the runaway price hike in the international market. To be more exact, the unbridled price hike has now been replaced by its diametrical opposite, a steep slide in the overall price index in the highly industrialised nations of North America and Europe. In Bangladesh, however, the essential commodities market is yet to show any impact of the big shift taking place in the global marketplace.
The raging recession in the advanced world with attending fall in consumer demand and plummeting price index has not, so far, brought any good news for Bangladesh. The steep fall in the prices of all conceivable commodities including those of the food grains in the international marketplace looks lost on our dealers in essential commodities, especially food grains. Because, the local importers are not in any rush to import food grains taking advantage of neither the falling prices in the international market, nor the enhanced facilities for import provided by the local banks. As a consequence, the prices of food grains and other essential commodities have not shown any significant change for the better in the meanwhile.
Therefore, the challenge facing the government and the farmers to grow more food grains, especially rice, to feed the increased number of people in the coming days is still remaining as big as it has been before. But how are we then going to achieve this feat of supplying food to the growing number of population at an affordable price in the years to come?
To tell the truth, there is no ready answer to this question. What is being attempted to stress here is that complacency is a mindset that we must discard under any circumstances. And at the same time, we will have to take care that no stone is left unturned in our search for introducing new methods and techniques to meet our never ending challenge of feeding the population, whose number is growing inexorably every year.
Amid such hopes and fears, there is a piece of good news from the field of agricultural research in the country. The Rural Development Academy (RDA) of Bogra has achieved a great feat through a two years long special research project, "Good Seeds Initiative-1" funded by the Swiss Development Company (SDC). It has been proved through the project that the country will be able to produce 8.93 million tonnes of supplementary Boro and Aman rice annually by what it termed 'slightly-tweaked' version of the seed processing method our farmers have been using traditionally. Farmers of 10 villages in Naogaon, Bogra and Sirajganj districts witnessed the use of this new technique through video.
Such attempts at ensuring better yield of crops through slight variations in the traditional farm practices followed by our farmers is always welcome. However, it is too early to go overboard about this new breakthrough claimed by the RDA, because we are yet to go into real production of rice using this new production technology.
According to the food ministry, every year the farmers use some 443,000 tonnes of good quality seed to grow 27.94 million tonnes of Boro and Aman rice. But if farmers now go for this new 'tweaked' version of the traditional seed processing technology, it is claimed that, only 22, 155 tonnes of seed will be able to meet the total requirement of seed and thereby save some 553.90 million taka for the country.
The RDA project helped some 100 farmers in 10 villages of three northern districts to demonstrate that it is possible to achieve food self-sufficiency in the country through slightly varying the traditional farming practices. If the above mentioned method proves successful on a large scale in the field, it will undoubtedly go a long way in meeting our constant challenge of feeding yet greater size of the population with our own resources in an economical way and without going for a major overhaul of our farming technology.
This is not the first time that various research organisations including our farmers themselves have been coming up with such news to rejoice. In this connection, one may well recollect the research carried out by the non-governmental body Rangpur Dinajpur Rural Service (RDRS) with the help of Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) to fight monga in the northern districts. That research again aimed to increase yield of rice without incurring any further cost in terms of seed or other inputs. The method however used hybrid variety of rice, where the shoots of the rice plants, called ratoons, growing from the stub of the plants after the previous harvest, were used to a grow a fresh batch of crop. In the experiment RDRS planted paddy ratoons in late June and harvested the crop on September 7.
However, one is not talking here about any new variety of rice. The farmers have already been using this hybrid variety. However, aided by this new research they would be able to get two crops successively. After harvesting the Boro crops, the farmers would plant the ratoons or shoots of the already cut down rice plants, in a field and continue to engage the farm workers in an uninterrupted fashion until winter crops and thereby help them escape the near famine condition known in the northern region as monga.
We have come a long from the IR8, the semi-dwarf rice variety that was introduced in the country in 1967. The green revolution that followed was the outcome of such small progresses made in the researches in seed, crop management and other farming practices. But since our land is limited, any growth in production has to be achieved vertically. And in the process, even if it is found that some research product has its flip-side, too, that should not in any way prevent us from continuing the research for finding still newer ways to acquire self-sufficiency in food production with our limited resources.