The government needs to allocate special funds in the upcoming national budget to procure more food grain from farmers to ensure that they receive a fair price for their production, said Brac Executive Director Dr Mahabub Hossain, who specialises in agro-economy.
Hossain said the government should focus on the interest of farmers for the sake of the country’s food security.
“Farmers will shift from rice to other crops if, time and again, they fail to get fair prices for their products. If the trend continues it will spell a big threat to the country’s food security.”
For the last three years, farmers, much to their frustration, have not been able to get fair prices for their produce, including rice and other food grains.
Currently around 5m hectares of land in Bangladesh is used for boro cultivation, while potato growers use 500,000 hectares, wheat growers use 400,000 hectares and maize farmers use 300,000 hectares of land.
According to the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), the government targeted 4.78m hectares for boro cultivation, but farmers cultivated on 4.75m hectares this current year.
Hossain said boro cultivation this year is almost 7% less than last year because farmers went for more production of wheat, maize and other cash crops.
“I produced around 90 maunds of boro rice from 0.4 hectares of land, whose present market price is Tk40,500. I spent Tk30,000 for production costs,” said Masud Chowdhury, a farmer in Dinajpur.
“It would have been better for me to produce maize as I would have earned at least Tk20,000 more than production costs on my 0.4 hectares of land,” he said.
Statistics show that from 2010-11 to 2012-13, wheat-producing land increased by about 70,000 hectares and maize by 85,000 hectares.
The government’s limited storage capacity is also depriving farmers of their fair price.
Due to a lack of adequate storage, the government failed to procure food grains from the grower level, thus depriving farmers of fair prices, said AM Muazzem Husain, former professor of Agro-business in Bangladesh Agriculture University.
The government declared it would procure 1m tonnes of boro rice from the internal market against its total storage capacity of 1.64m tonnes.
As of May 26, the government silos contained 856,000 tonnes of food grains, meaning it has only about 784,000 tonnes capacity left.
This year the government procured 113,009 tonnes of wheat from the internal market and only 5,409 tonnes of boro rice (as of May 22), though boro harvesting is almost complete.
The government has already set the price of per maund of boro rice at Tk700. However, the farmers are not getting the announced price, as the government is not procuring rice from the internal market in full swing.
Usually farmers sell their produces, especially the paddy, soon after harvest, when the price remains very low; farmers are forced to sell rice at a lower price if the government does not purchase those.
They cannot preserve rice as they do not have storage space.
To overcome the situation, agriculture economist Dr Asaduzzaman suggested that the government allocate funds in the budget to introduce “consumer/marketing loans” to growers so they can store their produces for at least three to four months to get a fair price.
“This loan mechanism would help both the government and farmers as farmers will get a fair price and the government could ensure adequate storage.”
If the government can provide storage facilities to small and mid-level growers, they will be encouraged to continue rice cultivation, said Asaduzzaman, a researcher at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).