‘Enhance crop output’ to boost agriculture sector

RANGPUR, Sept 5 (BSS): Speakers at a workshop here have stressed the need for proper planning to enhance crop production for further boosting the agriculture sector to ensure national food security coping with the adverse impacts of climate change.
Bangladesh has already achieved laudable success in agriculture and the farmers have been playing a key role getting assistance from the government to attain the success through increasing production of all crops, including cereal crops,  they said.
The local government and civil society jointly organised the workshop on 'Agriculture Development Planning' under the management of the upazila administration at Pirganj upazila parishad auditorium for preparing local agricultural development plan on Wednesday.
The Upazila Governance Project extended assistance in arranging the workshop participated by 15 union parishad chairmen, civil society members, government and NGO officials, farmers, journalists and local elite.
Pirganj Upazila Nirbahi Officer ATM Ziaul Islam addressed the workshop as the chief guest with Pirganj Upazila Agriculture Officer of the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) Rezaul Karim in the chair.
Assistant Commissioner (Land) for Pirganj upazila Rashedul Islam attended the workshop as the special guest.
The speakers stressed on ensuring optimum use of cultivable land, adoption of latest technologies and homestead gardening to further increase production in the agriculture sector for attaining sustainable food security.
They said the present pro-people and pro-farmer government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina puts maximum emphasis on agriculture and provides all possible assistance to farmers for achieving sustainable food security under adverse climate.
They put emphasis on proper agriculture development planning as the country's arable land area has been shrinking by one per cent annually when climate change threatens the agriculture sector hampering crop cultivation, environment, ecology and bio-diversity.
They called upon all concerned for ensuring optimum utilisation of the cultivable land area and government assistance in agriculture sector to keep crop production increasing further through coping with the adverse impacts of global climate change.