The current spate of rain-induced heavy floods has inundated crops planted on 29,000 hectares of arable land in the country, including Aus rice on 22,000 hectares and seasonal vegetables on 7,000 hectares.
Offering these preliminary crop loss statistics at a city event yesterday, Agriculture Minister Dr Muhammad Abdur Razzaque expressed hope that the deluge-induced crop loss could be recouped as there were no major crops in the fields at the moment.
However, the minister expressed a deep sense of caution about high food costs in the future, noting that a prolonged conflict centering on the Ukraine war might jack up food prices exorbitantly by October-November this year. He also took a swipe at the West’s “double standards” regarding conflict-related trade sanctions.
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“Europe is getting their Russian gas supply intact while if we want to import oil and wheat from the trouble zone we’re considered as complicit to Russian assault on Ukraine. What sort of a double standard is this?” the minister said, referring to the West’s sanctions on Russia and Belarus and describing how Bangladesh is falling prey to paying high import costs for chemical fertilizers and foodgrains.
He was addressing a seminar, titled “Agriculture and Media in the Face of Global Food Security: Bangladesh Context”, held at the Krishibid Institution, Bangladesh (KIB) under the aegis of the Agricultural Information Service (AIS).
Dr Razzaque said the prices of urea and triple superphosphate have doubled while the price of potash fertilizer has witnessed a fourfold rise from $300 a ton to $1,200 a ton. He, however, dispelled all concern over food security by reassuring the audience that Bangladesh is well poised with a solid food stock in hand.
With Agriculture Secretary Md Sayedul Islam in the chair the seminar was also addressed, among others, by Information and Broadcasting Minister Hasan Mahmud, Bangladesh Agricultural University Emeritus Professor M A Sattar Mandal, AIS Director Surajit Saha Roy, and journalists Shykh Seraj, Reaz Ahmad, Kawser Rahman and Iftekhar Mahmud.
Flood-induced crop loss
Out of a planned Aus acreage of 1.3 million hectares, 1.1 million hectares has been planted so far, of which rice crops on 22,000 hectares of land has been inundated by floodwater, while vegetables on 7,000 hectares of land out of a total 387,000 hectares were damaged by the deluge.
As planting of Aman, a major rice season, has not started yet, the agriculture minister hoped the country wouldn’t face any food security issue. “If seedbeds of Aman crop are damaged by floods, we will be able to provide farmers necessary support,” he assured.
