Bangladesh should invest more to develop new crop varieties which will be climate tolerant as well as high yielding to ensure the country’s food security as the changing pattern of climate is already hampering food production, speakers said at a discussion yesterday.
The discussion was held as a parallel session at South Asia Right to Food Conference 2015 at Dhaka University’s Senate hall..
“We need to develop more crop varieties which could adapt to the extreme climatic events like salinity, drought and cold to ensure sufficient food production,” said Dr Ahsan Uddin Ahmad, executive director of Centre for Global Change.
He also thanked the government for the initiatives taken to develop extreme climate tolerant crop varieties but said said the volume was not satisfactory.
According to the fifth assessment report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Bangladesh is identified as being at specific risk from climate change due to its exposure to the rise in sea levels and extreme events like salinity intrusion and drought which will hamper the country’s food as well as livelihood security.
In addition to the negative impacts of climate change, the country’s food security is under threat by the gradually reducing agricultural lands caused by rapid urbanisation and industrialisation.
According to Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Bangladesh has been losing about 257 acres of arable land every day.
“The country needs to adopt more agricultural technologies like cold storage and safety measures to reduce losses incurred during the harvest season and the post-harvest season,” said Dr Md Abdus Sattar Mandal, senior adviser to the FAO Bangladesh.
“Despite having a good situation in the country’s food production, Bangladesh still lacks in proper commercialisation measures. The government needs to take measures to meet the growing demand for food.”
