With 190 percent cropping intensity (CI) Bangladesh ranks top on world’s CI Index, meaning farmers in this country are tilling every possible piece of arable lands in all possible ways to maximize yields from increasingly scarce land resources. Cropping intensity refers to raising of a number of crops from the same field during one agricultural year. Higher cropping intensity means that a higher proportion of the net sown area is being cropped more than once during one agricultural year. This also implies higher productivity per unit of arable land during one agricultural year. Bangladesh has a total cultivable area of 8.5 million hectares but its total cropped area is over 15 million hectares as farmers grow crops twice, thrice and in some cases even four times a year from same lands.
Now we need to understand why this discussion on cropping intensity is so very crucial. High CI Index signifies that Bangladesh has much less per capita cultivable land requiring her farmers to grow more from less to feed 170 million people. It appears more challenging when one considers the fact that Bangladesh’s staple rice occupies three-fourth of Bangladesh’s total farmland leaving just 25 percent land for other crops to grow. That essentially means other essential commodities – cereal crops, vegetables, tuber crops, spices, oilseeds, fruits, jute, cotton etc. – all have to compete for lands in Bangladesh. This is a very challenging situation where it’s next to impossible for this country and its farmers to grow all the farm produces to a level that can fully meet the domestic yearly requirements. So, we’ve to make very conscious and considerate decisions on how much farmlands can be allotted for which crops. If farmers go for wider wheat acreage, maize output may dwindle and if they go for cultivating more oilseeds, that may take up some of the potato lands. Being a textile and garments-rich nation Bangladesh needs more cotton than many other countries of the world. Had there been enough cultivable land it would rather make sense that this country grows more cotton than importing the same in such big volume. But land scarcity handicapped Bangladeshi farmers, leaving little choices for them to make other than growing two, three, four crops a year from same lands and adopting newer high-yielding technologies.
As against a yearly demand of over eight million bales of cotton Bangladesh can grow just 150,000 bales locally and the rest comes from imports. A large bulk of the country’s cooking oil comes from imports as domestic oilseeds production is nothing significant. As against a yearly demand of seven million tons of wheat, Bangladesh now grows 1.3 million tons a year and depends on imports for the rest.
But the overall scenario is not that bleak as it appears from this previous paragraph of this article. We’ve great stories of success in many other cropsin Bangladesh. And given the land scarcity challenges, these successes achieved in the areas of maize, potato and vegetable productions are no mean feat. We’ll discuss on these in the following paragraphs. We need to keep in mind that the country’s farm sector has to compete constantly for lands as land resources are very much in demand for housing, industries and infrastructure developments. We simply can’t negate those competing demands for lands particularly at a juncture of time when Bangladesh is graduating up from its LDC status.
Take maize for one example where Bangladeshi farmers’ success in recent years is phenomenal. There was a time in ’70s or ‘80s when maize was almost like an unknown cereal in Bangladesh. Now, Bangladesh is eyeing at expanding the acreage and output of the country’s second biggest cereal crop after rice and tap export market within next five years.
Thanks to right policy supports, a burgeoning feed industry, and farmers’ gaining higher profit margin, the country’s annual maize output hit a record seven-fold increase from 0.75 million tons in 2009 to 5.4 million tons this year.Agriculture Ministry now plans to increase maize production to 10 million tons by 2025 and turn Bangladesh into a maize exporting country from an importing one.With an ever-increasing demand rise, largely owing to fish, dairy and poultry feed industry, Bangladesh is still a million-ton shy of meeting its 6.5 million tonsdomestic maize requirements but gradually narrowing down the gap.
Mexico-based CIMMYT is the global leader in publicly-funded maize and wheat research and related farming systems. CIMMYT along with the Bangladesh government and non-government organization, Brac, are the early promoters of maize production in Bangladesh in the 1990s.Policy planners, breeders and market sources attributed the amazing rise in maize production to a number of factors; demand from feed industry, farmers’ comparative advantage in terms of profits, less irrigation requirements, availability of both home-grown and imported hybrid seeds with high yield potentials, and overall policy and research supports.
With over 10 million tons of yearly output in potato, Bangladesh emerges as the seventh largest producer of the tuber crop in the world. We’ve at least two million tons of exportable surplus.Unfortunately, the export potentials of potato have not been tapped properly. Over the past few years, our traders managed to export potatoes on and off to various countries but due to quality compromise they largely failed to maintain a sustained export market. Value addition in potato and marketing and exporting in the forms of potato flake, cracker and starch can fetch more money. Other than consuming potato as food item, it’s industrial use potential has to be tapped fully.
Russia has an annual potato demand of 26 million tons with a shortage of five million tons. Even if the total volume of Bangladesh’s surplus potato is exported to Russia that would not meet half of Russian demand. Bangladesh exported more than 20,000 tons of potato to Russiain FY2013-14. But in following year, Russia stopped importing from Bangladesh suggesting Bangladesh upgrade its phytosanitary system, security measures to prevent the use of fake phytosanitary certificates, and proper inspection at ports to ensure shipment of safe agricultural produce.
Bangladesh also achieved a good progress in terms of vegetable production in the country in recent years. In between 2013 and 2019, Bangladesh’s annual vegetable output witnessed a 37 percent increase from 19 million tons to nearly 27 million tons. In growth rate of vegetable production, Bangladesh emerged as third fastest country in recent years. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) credited Bangladesh for posting the highest year-on-year increment in vegetable production after Uzbekistan and Nepal during the first decade of the 21st century.
According to the Agriculture Information Services (AIS) of the Ministry of Agriculture, some 156 varieties of traditional and non-traditional vegetables are being cultivated in the country, among which 35 are considered as principal vegetables.Bangladesh is currently exporting 50 varieties of vegetables to some 118 countries. Bangladesh exported $100 million worth of vegetables in 2018-2019.However, the widening gap between vegetable production cost and the prices consumers pay remains an area for immediate policy attention. Illegal tolls and middlemen’s profit-mongering are blamed for such a widening gap. Unless addressed with appropriate policy and good governance interventions, this maynegatively impact further growth of the sector.
Reaz Ahmad is Executive Editor of Dhaka Tribune and a Cochran Fellow of the United States Department of Agriculture
