Dr. M Abul Kashem Mozumder and Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque :
Well, our think tanks stress the importance of food security as a matter of contemporary global concern. Agricultural development project cannot bypass the burning issue like the survival of the small farmers and the landless. Their maladies have accentuated due to perennial neglect the non-monetized and stagnant rural economy suffer. Landholding in our country has long been subdivided and fragmented due to the operation of the law of inheritance. Population pressure over land has become unmanageable. The result is fast increasing of the number of marginal farmers and the farmers with no arable land. Those without land till cultivable plot either as wage earners or share croppers. The pre-existing process of production based lopsided economic relationship can hardly provide any incentives to the marginal farmers.
Low productivity of the poor farmers as ‘farm laborers’ may be attributed to the stingy benefits offered to this toiling working class that cannot be called incentives as such. The small farmers hard pressed by increasing marginalization sell their land thus creating ‘uneconomic size of land’. The phenomenon of small holding estate poses a threat to food security. Capital investment on intensive cultivation for producing enough food has been in doldrums in the context of devastating flood that vist every year during monsoon.
The poor farmers have been brought into policy fold under this institutional safety umbrella. Awakening of the small farmers and the landless to buttress their organization potentials to the desired level can help them to be self-supporting backed by an institutional agency. They will be able to change their outlook, attitude and approach. There needs to be action research under the aegis of small holder agricultural programme with a’ full sequence of data collection; time series data, compilation, analysis, documentations and participatory assessment methods.
True scores of marginal farmers’ families suffer tremendous economic losses because of flood and super cyclone after the end of winter season. The vulnerability of the marginal in the coastal belt beggar description. As has been reported by business desk, the New Nation, “small holder farmers in developing countries , who are working to grow more food in some of the world’s most marginalized areas are already facing more job and livelihood challenges due to severe weather such as droughts and floods.
The upcoming intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) physical science summary will be of crucial importance for the 2 billion people dependent on small holder farms, many of which are owned and operated by families.
As small farmers in developing countries are among the most affected by climate change the time to adapt cannot be delayed. IFAD’s new adaptation for small holder agricultural programme (ASAP) is now the largest global initiative dedicated to supporting the adaptation of poor smallholder farmers to climate change across the world. (The New Nation, .2013 ) Alarmingly the number of landless and sharecropper has registered an upward trend according to the report of the recent agricultural census. There has been sharp decrease in the size and number of agricultural farms.
The concentration of the landless proletariat in the capital city is not a health sign. 2008 statistics revealed that there are 321 lakh 60 thousand landless households (12.84%). “Bangladesh is the terminal floodplain delta of three large rivers – Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna.
Every year about 20 to 30 percent, and every few years about 40 percent, of the country is flooded, causing serious damage to infrastructure, crops and the overall economy. Projected climatic changes and rise in the sea level are likely to worsen the situation. Since independence in 1971, the Government has made large investments to protect against floods and cyclones.
However, issues such as public and private roles and community participation in disaster management, environmental protection, and institutional reforms of Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB), need to be addressed.”
Policy makers have by now given a serious thought to the gravity of the crisis like environment degradation.
Realizing that environment degradation stemming from climate change cannot be reversed they think to opt for mitigation of sufferings and dislocation and enhancement of coping capacities of the coastal inhabitants. Crisis management is a two-fold mechanism-mitigation and survival. As the Finance Minister said, “We should aim to mitigate dislocation and build the capacity to
Flooding is the most damaging natural hazard in Bangladesh. Recent initiatives of the concerned authorities and NGOs for risk management aims to reduce the impacts of flooding through adaptation measure like insurance. Yet this measure is seldom assessed collectively. Researchers are now analyzing how each of the approaches defines flood risk and investigate the challenges of adapting to coastal flood risk in the countries exposed to the deluge of flood especially in coastal belt.
In a seminar on insurance for combating risk of flood held in 10 June 2018 under the auspices of OXFAM the participants seemed unanimous about a new management approach like insurance. Yet the main agenda of action should be to create awareness and attraction of farmers for using insurance approach.
By studying the insurance approach we can get to know how to make insurance approach popular among the flood victims who are producing cereal to maximize food security.
True OXFAM has been reported to be pro-active in flood-prone areas. It works especially on marginal farmers Survey on marginal farmers and other victims have been conducted through pay-out method (comparative need assessment for allocation of money) recent years.
The highlights of the seminar on flood risk are the recommendations insurance policy for all occupational groups apart from peasants, all insurance companies should manage foold risk joing their hands together, collectively in other words, elimination of VAT on premium, timely distribution of insurance money among the beneficiaries, positive changes in insurance policy, and new policy development, a portion of annual budget be eared for insurance premium, assessing amount of damage due to flood and compensation payment accordingly, need for awareness about damaging consequence of flood to minimize loss, and coordination among the organizations involved in this humanitarian activity.
(Dr. M Abul Kashem Mozumder, Pro-VC, BUP and Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque, Retired Professor, Chittagong University).
