Living under the shadow of food insecurity

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Enayet Rasul
Bangladesh started winning the appreciation of the international community when, in 1999-2000, it came around to achieving self sufficiency in cereal production. In the years following, this good trend followed and was cited as one of the major indicators of success of this country. This physically small and overpopulated country but ranking among the top ten countries of the world for sheer population size, was seen as successfully feeding itself and likely to continue to do so in the future. The spectre of famine, the need for urgent food hand outs from donor countries, starvation on a large scale from food shortages, all these things were not feared for Bangladesh.
But is this bright outlook changing ? Estimates of foodgrains production in 2006-7, warrants caution and provides insights into the looming food insecurity. The worry should be greater because in this period the country did not have to suffer a major natural calamity such as drought or flood. A drop in food or agricultural production under such conditions can be justified. But a significant drop in production in a normal year suggests man-made failures in the production and related chains.
The aus, aman and boro rice crops are the main activities in the farm lands throughout the year to produce sufficiently the staple food in the every day diet of the Bangladeshis. Aus rice production in 2006-7 was targeted at 2.22 million tons but the yield was some 1.51 million tons or a deficit of some 0.7 million tons. Aman rice production was targeted at 13.18 million tons and the harvests yielded some 10.8 million tons resulting in a deficit of 3 million tons. Boro rice production was projected to be 16.74 million tons but actual output was some 14.5 million tons causing a shortfall of some 2.24 million tons. Wheat production target was some 0.83 million tons and the actual produce was 0.72 million tons or less than anticipated production by some 0.11 million tons. Maize production at 0.85 million tons was only adequate to meet 16 per cent of the demand.
According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the overall target of cereal production was some 32.97 million tons. But the estimated production being 28.38 million tons, production was short of target by some 4.59 million tons. Thus, it is no wonder that market prices of rice have tended to be substantially above the normal after the last harvest of the Boro rice. Media reports also informed about the unusually low amount of government stocks of foodgrains and the move on the part of the government to import some 1.3 million tons of rice and wheat on an emergency basis. Government was also seen launching a large internal procurement programme for rice but response to it was reported to be very inadequate even after adjustments upward twice the procurement price. This is not surprising either because farmers usually respond enthusiastically to government's procurement drives not only if the procurement prices leave incentives for them. They are motivated to sell also when surpluses are in their hands and this year production of foodgrains has been leaner.
Food security has to be a concern not only for Bangladesh but all other countries. Of course, some romantically inclined ones in the policy planning of the country may dismiss off the looming food security as scaremongering. They may say that government has a hefty foreign currency reserve now, bigger than at any time in the past. Spending a part of this burgeoning reserve, it would be in a position to import foodgrains in large quantities to offset any hardships on the part of consumers, they would contend.
But such calculations are flawed basically for the reasons that a poor country like Bangladesh needs to conserve as much as possible its forex reserve or needs to spend it for optimum returns. Foreign currencies spent on purely consumptive activities such as food, fetch no returns. But when foreign currencies are utilized to import capital machinery and raw materials for production activities, the same create the badly needed economic growth to alleviate poverty by creating income and wealth.
Besides, all countries in varying degrees need to consider successful food production as unavoidable and cardinal duties for strategic economic reasons. If this was not the case, then the countries of the European Union (EU) would not be subsiding their farmers massively in order to keep them motivated in food production. EU countries can easily buy food at much cheaper prices from international markets that would make the subsidies redundant. But they prefer to maintain the subsidies out of concern for sheer security. Dependence on foreign food can be dangerous. Prices of imported foods do fluctuate and may rise high in the event of worldwide shortages. Such a possibility is showing up in the present year. Or there might not be available food surpluses to maintain smoothly export operations involving food. Therefore, every country in varying degrees tries to raise as much food as it can to guard against any unfavourable situation. Senior citizens in Bangladeshis should have memories of the 1973-74 famine that tuned worse only when foreign supplies of food failed to reach this country in time for various reasons. Thus, it is not pragmatic to wish away the food related concerns because raising enough quantities of food, locally, happens to be a core need linked to the security of the country or the basic well-being of its population.
Bangladesh's regression from its previous inspirational performance in food production is noted to be not only as a peculiar development in 2006-7. Food production has been under stresses for a longer period. Only the stresses have built up greatly last year and demotivated the farmers so much that led to such a big food gap. For successive years farmers have been tormented by black marketing and scarcity of basic inputs such as fertlizers, seeds, pesticides, diesel, etc. Farmers have begged, borrowed and resorted to other desperate acts to apply inputs at the irrational prices and maintain productivity on the high side. But as this year's production records show, they are starting to give in to the stresses and the outcome is obvious,
Government is doing good work in many areas. But it needs to take up food production as the highest priority, starting immediately. The supply chain of agri-inputs must be streamlined at the fastest. The prices and supply of inputs must be made favourable for the farmers to motivate and enable them to go on producing on the high side. This is a big challenge facing the government and this must be overcome swiftly for the sake of the country's food security or economic security.