Bangladesh has never been secured as far as the domestic food production is concerned, but it has become even more vulnerable of late due to conditions such as drought, high prices of diesel and fertilizer, and power crisis. These are surely going to affect Aman and Boro paddy cultivation across the country, making achieving the target of rice production this season very uncertain.
According to a report published in this newspaper yesterday, farmers in most districts have failed to cultivate Aman paddy in rain water. They are now cultivating Aman paddy by irrigation. Even the irrigation activity is being hampered due to insufficient electricity supply and price hike of fuel. Weather conditions are things we do not have control over, but the sudden hike of diesel price by record margin and load shedding over which we have control have turned the situation for farmers very precarious.
If governance of the country did not mean bureaucratic abuse of power and corruption was not that rife, the authorities would not have to increase fuel and fertilizer prices, apparently to fulfill the conditions of the IMF to which Bangladesh approached for a $4.5 billion loan.
The government must be callous in borrowing money that it may not be able to repay in future and make the country declared bankrupt. We will urge the loan givers not to take it as an easy business for not having responsible economic management. We have the government that wasted money in so-called big projects and encouraged capital flight from the country while the fate of the general public was completely ignored. Men in the government behave as if there is no luxury they cannot afford.
The government’s mismanagement of the economic affairs has now not only greatly increased the living cost of people; it has also substantially increased the cost of agricultural production. The government is squeezing out blood from the people to collect money. Not only the ordinary people; even the once well-off businessmen also find their survival a day-to-day affair.
The government, instead of going after the plunderers who had stolen public money, literally thousands of crores of taka, is now collecting money from the poor people.
However, more agricultural cost means even more shooting up of food prices in the market. The government’s boast that Bangladesh has achieved food safety was long ago punctured. If the present inflation is further aggravated by inclement weather and an increased cost of farm inputs, food production in the country is going to be very shaky. The report says that farmers are not getting fertiliser and paying the high price.
In the recent days, at many places in the country, farmers came to the streets and created roadblocks with their demand for fertilizer.
Farmers have accused the dealers of creating artificial crises of fertilizer across the country to increase the price of this most essential farm input. For achieving target production of rice, farmers must be provided with fertilizer and uninterrupted electricity supply. But we have doubts whether the government would be able to meet the demands of the farmers in time which is a major factor in agriculture.
