Budget support needed to take innovative agro-tech to village level: Binayak Sen

The budgetary support should be ensured to take the technologies developed for food security and agricultural transformation to villages, Binayak Sen, director general of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), said at a seminar today.

"Investment in agriculture should be given importance in the budget," he said at the programme, held on the initiative of a research project titled "The Political Economy of Agrarian Futures in Bangladesh."  

"Food security not only requires rice but also poultry and fisheries products. Budget support should be given to maintain their production. For this, agricultural technologies should be prioritised so that they can easily reach the village level," he added.

"If this can be achieved, a significant change will come," he hoped.

The economist said it is very important to rationalise the tariff and subsidy policies in various sectors of agriculture.

All the discussions will be meaningless if there is no change in the budget for agriculture, he said. It should not be forgotten that 40% of the country's population is still dependent on agriculture.

Abdur Razzaque, president of the Standing Committee on the Agriculture Ministry, said the country's agriculture is influenced by four main trends: commodity prices, irrigation, climate change, and storage systems.

"These factors will shape current and future agriculture and will play a significant role in the transformation or future direction of the agricultural system," he added.

The government-backed think tank has initiated the research project focusing on the future direction of small farmers in the country.  

Professor MA Sattar Mandal, professorial fellow at BIDS and emeritus professor at Bangladesh Agricultural University, and Geof Wood, emeritus professor of International Development and fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences at the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath, UK, presented keynote papers on the subject.

Professor Mandal said that out of the total three-quarters of a crore rural households, about two-thirds are farming families, and about 92% of them are small and marginal farmers. They cultivate more than half of the arable land. This means that more than half of the agricultural production is produced on small farmers' land.

"However, it is difficult for small farmers to meet the increasing cost of production amid a shortage of labour, high wages, rising prices of all inputs, including irrigation, fertilizers, and seeds, and a shortage of capital," he added.

"Here the question arises: what will happen to the small farmers? Will they survive? The answer to this question is more political than economic."

He noted that land is decreasing at a rate of 0.5% per year, but there is pressure to increase production.

Professor Mandal said it remains to be seen whether the small farmers will survive, whether all farming will shift to large farmers, or if a hybrid system (with both small and large farmers) will continue.

Economist Hossain Zillur Rahman, also an adviser to a former caretaker government, said the family farm is undergoing a major change.

"Today's small farmers are also changing, along with commercialisation. Now we have to look at coastal areas, where conditions are changing more rapidly. The amount of unused land is increasing, while the amount of land used is decreasing in Sylhet. There are two types of changes to work with," he said.

"We see agriculture only as a means of food security, but now we need to make policies so that it can play a significant role in economic growth in addition to food supply, as seen in Denmark and New Zealand."