Sustaining food security

Can Bangladesh sustain the gains achieved in food security and make further progress towards sustainable food security by 2030? One could be optimistic that Bangladesh can do it. But the government has to provide an enabling environment through continuing investment in the R&D (research and development), disseminating improved technologies by using modern information and communication technology, and targeting marginal farmers and women for credit, input subsidies and marketing support.
The main challenge to progress towards food security emanates from increasing growth of population. Reduction in population growth, from 3 per cent per year at about the time of independence to about 1.2 per cent now, is laudable. But there are indications that the progress made in fertility reduction has slowed down in recent years. In Chittagong and Sylhet divisions, the fertility rate is still higher than three, while the national average is 2.3, and it's less than two in Khulna Division. Strong traditional norms and socio-cultural conditions in Chittagong and Sylhet divisions contribute to low acceptance of family planning not to be overcome easily.
The population is still increasing by 1.8 million every year. Rice production has to increase by 0.4 million tons every year to meet the need for staple food for the growing population. The increase in domestic production at that rate would be difficult due to several supply side factors mentioned below.
The arable land has been shrinking by 0.6 per cent every year due to demand from housing and industries, and infrastructure, as well as the loss of land from river erosion. With global warming and climate change, another one-sixth of the land may be submerged with brackish water over the next 40 years due to rise in the sea level with adverse impact on soil salinity. The climate change may make the monsoon more erratic, raising risks in sustaining the growth in crop production.
The soil fertility has been declining due to over-exploitation of soil nutrients and unbalanced use of fertilisers. The ground water aquifer has gone down due to over-mining of ground water for irrigating dry-season rice (Boro rice) that was the predominant source of growth of rice production over the last two decades. The low-hanging fruits with regard to irrigation expansion and technological progress have already been harvested. Almost 75 per cent of the net cultivated land is now irrigated and over 85 per cent of rice land is already grown with high- yielding modern rice varieties. All these factors limit the potential for further increase in production through the dry season irrigated rice farming.
Bangladesh is projected to be most seriously affected by climate change. The land available from crop farming in the coastal region may gradually be reduced due to inundation from sea water and intrusion of saline water inwards. The risk in rain-fed rice farming may increase due to erratic monsoons and increased frequency of floods, droughts and cyclones.
There are some silver linings, however. With economic progress, people now have capacity to access a diversified diet with intake of less rice and more quality food. The per capita consumption of rice has declined by almost 1.5 kg per person per year over 2000-2010. Rice, which is a high-cost cereal, may not be used as livestock feed as it is in case of developed countries. Bangladesh may turn out to be a rice-exporting country if rice farming becomes competitive in the world market. The constraint is, however, high cost of irrigation because of dependence on ground water that is extracted by tube-wells that uses diesel as the source of power.
There is potential for further increase in rice production through intensification of land use in the vast coastal region and the depressed basins in haor and char lands where single crop system (it covers about 25 per cent of the land) still prevails. The crop intensification is possible through use of shorter maturity crop varieties that have already been developed by the R&D system. The risk in rain-fed rice cultivation could be reduced by diffusion of submergence- tolerant, drought- tolerant, and saline-tolerant varieties in adverse agro-ecological environments, such as the southern coast and the haor areas in the northeast, and the flood-prone areas in the river and coastal islands (chars). With the reduction of risk, farmers could increase utilisation growth augmenting inputs which they now use in sub-optimal dozes. The government can play a vital role in this area by strengthening the R&D institutions, improving research capacity and morale of researchers through fellowships for graduate and post-graduate-level training at international research centres and advanced educational institutions, and promoting farmer-participatory validation of improved technologies.
The hybrid rice which produces 20 per cent higher yield than the presently grown inbred varieties has been introduced in Bangladesh. But the diffusion has proceeded slowly because of poor grain quality of the hybrid varieties. If breeders succeed in developing good quality hybrid rice, Bangladesh can produce an additional 5 million tons of rice from the five million hectares of Boro land.
Bangladeshi farmers are smart in adopting finer crop management practices. But the gap in yield between farmers' field and research stations is still moderate to large. The yield gaps of existing varieties could be reduced with the adoption of finer crop management practices, such as the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), and the wet and dry irrigation system.
A more difficult challenge is to accelerate the growth in the production of foods -not just cereals - such as pulses, oils, fish and animal products. The demand for these nutritious food items has been growing fast with economic prosperity. There is a need to reduce the growing import dependence for non-rice foods to insulate the domestic market from the price volatility of the world market. The R&D system must find ways to fit in lower-yielding crops such as pulses and oilseeds in the rice-based system and to develop higher-yielding varieties to make them more competitive with rice farming. The government can play a supportive role by creating an enabling environment for scientists in the R&D system to more effectively interact with the international agricultural research centres under the umbrella of the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
A major issue for food security and promotion of farmers' livelihood is the high temporal and seasonal fluctuations in food prices. The volatility in prices is a major constraint to increasing production of the perishable crops such as potato and vegetables. The government should provide an enabling environment to link farmers to markets through public-private partnership for increased investment in processing and storage facilities and removing constraints in the value chain. It should also provide support to explore export market for vegetables, investment in quality control for domestic production and processing and ensure compliance with the food safety regulations for entry of vegetables and fish into developed country's markets.

The writer is a Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagr University.  
[email protected]