Transform traditional agriculture into industrial one, say experts

FE Report Speakers at a seminar Saturday at the Faculty of Business Studies (FBS) of Jahangirnagar University (JU) at Savar underlined the need for transforming the country's traditional agriculture into an industrial agricultural one, in order to attain food security and to enhance productivity of arable land at the highest level possible. They said policy makers have to give top priority to development and diffusion of improved technologies to take advantage of developments in modern biological science and diversified modern agricultural production to help increase productivity to meet the problem of population boom. They said country's agriculture should be corporatised or collective cropping must be introduced under private sector or under patronisation of government to extract more results from it. They came up with such observations at the fifth session -- "Agriculture and Food Security" -- of a three-day long seminar on "Bangladesh at 40: Changes and Challenges". In his paper on 'Four decades of Agricultural Development' of Bangladesh presented at the session, renowned agro-economist Dr Mahbub Hossain focused on changes and challenges in agricultural sector, specially the rural economy. Mahbub Hossain, who is also the executive director of leading non-government organisation BRAC, said despite a steady growth in food production, Bangladesh has been facing persistent challenges in achieving food security due to extreme pressure of population on limited land resources, natural disasters, unreliability of dependence on external market for food, and fluctuations in food prices from the influence of the volatile international market. He said the average annual agricultural growth rate accelerated from about 2.0% during the first two decades after Independence to about 3.0% in the 1990s, and 4.0% in the 2000s. "The intensity of land use through multiple cropping of the same parcel of land has increased over time and it has reached to about 200 per cent," he added. He said but agriculture's contribution to the national income declined from 48% in the 1970s, to 20% recently, due to faster growth of the industry and service sectors. "This is very normal. When a country moves forward on the road to development, the agricultural growth rate declines and service sector and industrial manufacturing sectors develop," he said. Dr Mahbub said the country's total land area is about 14.4 million hectare, of which about 60% is cultivated. He said the country's total arable land is about 9.0 million hectare. But the cultivated land has been declining since the 1980s due to increased demand from housing, industry and commerce, and infrastructure development. He said Bangladesh had abundant water resources which attracted people to it in the past and turned it into a densely settled region centuries ago. "But the surface water resource has been declining due to withdrawal of water in the upstream in India through construction of barrages and dams," he observed. Against the constraints to increase crop production, he noted there are certain opportunities including the scope for expansion of rice cultivation particularly in the southern coastal belt (about one million hectare of land) and also in the Sylhet region. Dr Mahbub said there is also scope for expansion of cultivation of fruits, vegetables and perennial crops in the hilly districts of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. "Average yield of rice can be increased through higher adoption of shorter maturity varieties that will allow further intensification of farming, varieties with higher grain quality that will add value to production, reducing post-harvest losses, and removing constraints in the value chain," he observed. He said increasingly fragmentation of lands is making cultivation and fisheries more difficult. Such trends also hinder using modern technology in the agriculture, he added. "Collective cropping can be the solution to such a problem where the government can play its due role", he said. He said rice occupies over three fourths of the copped area in Bangladesh. Other major crops are jute, wheat, potato, rapeseed and mustard, different types of pulses, chillies and onions and vegetables, sugarcane, tobacco and tea. Growth in rice production was very high at 2.8% per year in the 1980s, and 3.5% per year since 199091. Dr. Mahabub said maize production was negligible in the 1980s and early 1990s but grew rapidly during the last one and a half decades with the expansion of poultry sector in the country. Over the last two decades, good progress has also been achieved in the production of potato and vegetables. However, a major problem for vegetable and potatoes production is large year-to-year fluctuations in prices, he noted. He said to ensure food security; people of the country should be encouraged to diversify food habit on a greater scale. Depending on one crop only make food security riskier, he pointed out. Major General (retd.) Amjad Hossain Chowdhury, chief executive officer (CEO) of Pran Group who is the President of the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce & Industry (MCCI), said Bangladesh needs to use agriculture in such a way that it can be considered as industry or a corporation. Government's relentless efforts to improve rural economy would have succeeded cent per cent if agricultural would have been corporatised or collective farming was introduced. "In this regard, Bangladesh has comparative advantage such as abundant water, soil, labour and sunshine," he noted this in his paper on 'Corporatisation of Agricultural Sector', presented at the session. Sharing his success in Pran Group as an agro-processing industry, he said agro-based industries add value to the agricultural products. He said Pran had to come a long and tough way to set up agro-based industry in the country as Bangladesh as well as other South Asian countries do not have any strong tradition of agro-processing industry. He said to grow crops one needs seed, fertiliser, insecticidepesticide, plough power, labour, irrigation and finally marketing of product. Some of these are divisible while others are not, thus creating a serious problem in production. He said corporatisation means providing all of those supportive facilities to farmers for producing crops under a buyback guarantee. After producing crops, the company will buy the entire produces at market prices that must be fair. Amjad Hossain Chowdhury said Pran has achieved success through its agro-processing units. He said the model PRAN has tried to promote is that of contract farming based on, as an agro-processor. "Citing an example, he said, "Pran has contract growers all over North Bengal. Some produce Chini Gura Rice, others Mung Dal, or Chillies or Mustard or Tomato or Pea Nuts or Turmeric or Coriander or other spices, not to mention of the thousands of tonnes of green and ripe Mangoes and other fruits and horticulture products that we purchase every year." He said in 2010 alone close to Tk 3.00 billion (300 crores) worth of fresh farm produce was purchased by PRAN and such quantities increase every year. The chairman of the session, Mustaq Ahmed, Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture said there would be significant changes in agriculture in the coming years. Regarding contract farming, he said if farmers are empowered enough, they will bargain about their rights with owners. If it does not happens, there will be more possibilities about farmers being be deprived of, under the contract farming system. He said many countries have offered Bangladesh for buying land for cultivation. But at this moment, it is not possible to do that as the country is facing a scarcity of foreign exchange, he stated.