Increasing food supply, people's purchasing power are the biggest challenge

Availability and purchasing power considerations are the two main tools on which food security depends. With so many people out of work during the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a major blow to purchasing power, which seems to have not fully recovered yet.

Besides, when foods were available during the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war gave a big shock to the supply chain.

Along with increasing the supply of food products in the new year, we must equally work towards increasing the people's purchasing power and giving assurance to the most marginalised people.

The year 2022 witnessed a major event in terms of agricultural production. Irrigation pumps had to be installed in most parts of the country to lift groundwater during the season of Aman paddy cultivation due to a drought. But this water was not refilled enough. So, there is a fear of a crisis when we will try to use the groundwater during the dry season in the new year.

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We should make a plan for this situation by thinking carefully in advance, because the time of Boro cultivation is the biggest production season of paddy. It has to be arranged so that production is not affected in any way during this season.

Besides, the government allocation for open market sale (OMS) is very inadequate. People wait up to three days for the truck of rice and stand in line for six-seven hours, but still many leave without getting the product. What is the reason for this? The reason is that their capacity has reduced so much that they are desperately waiting for a little help from here, when everything is overpriced in the market. 

Here the government should increase the availability of the OMS programme for the low income people.

All the countries of the world implement certain policies to maintain their food security. Bangladesh should also prepare such a policy in advance. Plan ahead so you do not have to rush to buy rice from abroad at the last moment. We have to calculate how severe the crisis can be and what situation we might have to face. We also have to determine in advance which country we can buy from.

We have to plan and fix these things in advance this year as we have been suffering due to reduced supply of import-dependent products during the Russia-Ukraine war.

TBS Correspondent Shawkat Ali talked with M Asaduzzaman