NEWS reports in a national daily on Monday said despite fear of supply crisis of sacrificial animals during the Eid-ul-Azha because of Indian government’s halt on cattle export, Bangladesh has been able to overcome animal shortage from domestic sources. The fear of a big crisis proved largely unfounded to inject a high level of confidence that the country can go through such ban on animal export by our neighbour by boosting local fattening of cattle on commercial basis and also at household level. The Indian ban has rather worked as an impetus to local farmers to breed more cattle such as cows and goats to supply the Eid market from within the country, besides fulfilling regular demand for meat and dairy products. We see farmers’ targets worked better this year than anticipated. Moreover, compared to past years they were able to supply more animals and also got higher prices to bring spur in the local economy. Farmers were happy by getting better price while buyers were happy to see that the Indian government ban on export was not much felt in the supply chain. India relaxed the ban at the end through some selected border crossing, but the market had already switched focus on domestic sources. The occasion proved that crisis may be turned into blessing if people work with resolve to overcome any situation. For Bangladesh, it would pave the way of attaining self-sufficiency in cattle breeding and meat production in the next few years if the right kind of drive remains at work in the rural economy. Needless to say, the Central Bank has already put in place a new credit line for small and medium farmers exclusively to bring further boost to existing cow fattening programme. In this situation Bangladesh will have reasons to be quite happy with less dependence on cattle import and reduced shootouts of traders at borders. India will also be happy by being able to preserve their cows. Directorate of Livestock Statistics shows, out of 44 lakh cattle slaughtered during this Eid festival, small and medium farmers have supplied over 30 lakh locally, besides the entire goat stocks. Some others come from individual households and part of it was met by insignificant imports. Farmers have proved that they are still the backbone of the nation provided that they get adequate capital and treatment facility for animals. We have scarcity of land for cattle farming and yet much can be done for cattle farming. It is not unusual for any country to import cows but we have been depending too much on Indian smugglers. As it has been proved this time, India could not stop smuggling of cows to Bangladesh.
