Trade-off in agriculture

The food basket for a typical Bangladeshi household consists of rice, wheat, lentil, potato, vegetables, spices, fish, meat, etc. Four-fifths of calorie and protein come from these items. Again, only rice and wheat together supply 74 and 57 per cent respectively. There is very little calorie and protein coming from other food items such as onion, chilly and salt. This cannot be construed as food security; food security means not only rice but also inclusion of other items in the food basket to ensure balanced diet.
In the initial periods following independence, rice production declined due to devastated infrastructure and frequent natural calamities. But since 1976, rice production picked up gradually and, except short periods of early 1990s, depicted a continued upward trend. During the 1980s, increase in rice production and population growth went more or less at par. The happy moments came after those periods when increase in food production outpaced population growth. In this context, it needs to be mentioned that the upward trend in rice production occurred in the wake of irrigation-led HYVs (high-yielding varieties). Now almost four-fifths of cultivated lands are covered by HYVs. Of course, in coastal regions, traditional varieties still dominate. The spread of this irrigation-led technology was driven mostly by heavy investments in small-scale irrigation (such as in STWs and pumps) by the private sector. The most important development is that 90 per cent of the incremental rice production came from technological development - the technology accounting for four-fifths of dry season paddy and for 55 per cent of the total rice.
After rice, important food item is wheat. Bangladesh lacks the agro-climatic environment suited for wheat cultivation. The winter here is relatively short-lived and the most of the soil is clay soil. Even then whatever quantity of wheat is produced it is in the north-western Bangladesh (Rajshahi and Dinajpur) where winter stays for a longer period. Interestingly, wheat was an insignificant crop to farmers in the 1960s accounting for only one per cent or less of the total lands cultivated. But with the advent of HYV wheat in the late 1970s, farmers got interested in cultivating this crop. A rational farmer began to replace dry-season crops like lentil and oilseeds with wheat, and within a span of just one decade, acreage under wheat increased six times and production 10 times. This can be dubbed as technological incentive.
In later decades, wheat production lagged as expansion of Boro production progressed faster with STWs (shallow tube wells) using underground water. There was another  turnaround since 1996 due to price-related incentive when price of wheat rose faster than that of rice. However, recently wheat has been facing competition from maize - a crop with relatively more productivity, profitability and suitability in Bangladesh's agro-climatic condition. By and large, wheat had to exit on the heels of entry of Boro and maize.
  An important footnote to the food security situation in Bangladesh needs to be mentioned. It is owing to a massive change in seasonal production that foodgrains production has become more adaptable to calamities. To be specific on this point, area under Aus paddy (starting with the beginning of monsoon or April-June)  has gone down from 3.5 million ha to 1.1 million ha. In the past, late rains or drought used to cause heavy damage to Aus production; this has almost ceased to occur. Likewise, land under directly seeded broadcast Aman (March-November) has been reduced from 2.2 million ha to only 70,000 ha. In these lands, Boro is now grown with irrigated water (February-June). On the other hand, land under Boro has risen from only 50,000 ha of the 1970s to 4.8 million ha in 2012. At present, it is estimated that Boro and wheat (March-June) together account for 60 per cent of total food production as against only 10 per cent in the 1970s.
The most important observation to note is that the loss of Aman in the face of floods due to climatic change can now be compensated within a very short period whereas in the past, farmers had to wait for a full year to recoup the loss. Not only that, the seasonal change in production has smoothened  fluctuation of seasonal rice prices and helped it stay within an affordable limit.
  The gain in rice production wasn't a free lunch. The concepts of trade-off or opportunity costs in textbook economics had apparently more empirical meaning in Bangladesh's agriculture. The rapid expansion of Boro has cost heavily production of non-rice crops like pulses and oilseeds in terms of both acreage and production. Thus for the poor, increased consumption of rice has brought a reward in terms of carbohydrate but, at the same time, a punishing consequence in terms of lack of food with micronutrient such as pulses and oil. Admittedly, production of oilseeds has witnessed a rise in recent years but that of pulses showed a downward trend.   
The adage 'Mache-Bhate Bangali' implies that fish occupies an important part in Bangladeshi dishes. Unfortunately, the fight for rice has adversely affected fish production. But the good news is that after a decline since the 1970s, fish production has picked up since the 1980s.
A visit to rural areas would show how ponds, ditches and water bodies are being utilised in a planned way to augment fish supply. In some areas, rice fields have been converted to fish fields. By and large, commercial fish farming has replaced subsistence fish farming. Fish output has been growing at 7.0 per cent per year.
According to the Bangladesh Economic Survey 2012, total fish production from domestic sources (pond, beels and canals) has gone up from 2.3 million tons in 2005-06 to 3.2 million in 2011-12; domestic areas under fish rose from 1.8 million ha to 2.7 million ha. The cultivated area under fish in ponds, baor and shrimp farms has doubled. At present, low-lying areas in flood-prone regions are used for fish cultivation.
But the production of milk and meat - despite development of poultry sector and growing demand - is still in a dismal state. Livestock and poultry farms face big risks in production arising out of avian flu, shortage of fodder, poor marketing channel and other problems.
The writer is a Professor
of Economics at
Jahangirnagar University.  [email protected]