Agriculture Minister Begum Matia Chowdhury Sunday said future food security of Bangladesh is dependent on adaptation of genetically modified (GM) crops.
She made the remark while she was chairing a session on agricultural development as a part of the first conference of the Bangladesh Economists' Forum (BEF) that ended in Dhaka yesterday.
The Agriculture Minister said the country's land is being reduced while its population is also increasing.
"In this condition, we should appropriate GM crops", she said.
The minister informed newsmen that Bangladeshi consumers are now taking GM foods like soybean oil and banana.
"GM variety Bt Brinjal is being cultivated after combating legal problems," she said.
She also said Bangladesh is going to grow GM potato which will be able to fight late blight disease.
Agricultural economist and former executive director of Brac Dr Mahabub Hossain presented the keynote paper titled "Sustaining Food Security: Achievements and Challenges" which found a highly unequal distribution of land in rural areas.
The paper showed that 70 per cent people live in rural areas and most of their livelihoods are dependent on agriculture.
"Almost 60 per cent of the rural households are directly engaged in farming and they can access their food from self-production or trading the surplus with other foods," Dr Hossain said.
"But the landownership is highly unequally distributed, and so is the access to food from self-production. Almost 30 per cent of the households do not own any land and another 35 per cent own only up to half an acre," the paper said.
"Such tiny landownership is insufficient to meet the food needs of the households, even if the farmers use cutting-edge technologies", the paper said.
Cutting edges technologies mean latest modern technologies.
Dr MA Sattar Mondal, former vice-chancellor, the Bangladesh Agricultural University, emphasised on adaptation of modern technology in agriculture to raise productivity and to give farmers more profits.
Md Shamsul Alam, member, General Economic Division (GED) said the government funding will have to be raised for research purpose aiming to get high quality seeds.
Dr Quazi Shahabuddin, professorial fellow of the BIDS said the livestock and fisheries sector should be helped for their commercialisation.
Modern aquaculture methods should be adapted to grow fish production and improve its quality, he said.
Another paper was presented by Prof Dr Salim Rashid, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA which searched ways to raise productivity of rice and its export.
Begum Matia Chowdhury, while commenting on use of a few modern farm machinery by farmers, said the farmers can't afford costly machinery like 'combined harvesters'.
She said scientists and technicians should get logistic supports for developing modern farm equipment locally.
