The harvest of aman rice, the nation’s second largest source of cereal, has almost completed in different parts of the country. But due to low price the farmers are incurring heavy losses. The government’s procurement programme failed to provide any relief to them. The growers said that they were forced to sell un-husked rice much below their production cost. The government began procuring un-husked aman rice for Tk 1,040 per maund (40 kgs) but not directly from the growers. It announced earlier that 10 lakh tones of aman rice, six lakh tones of un-husked rice and four lakh tones of other rice would be procured. Unfortunately a procurement programme which buys barely seven percent of the country’s total aman production of 15 plus million tones will not have a significant impact on overall rice prices. Belying this reality the Food Ministry officials stated that prices would in fact increase after the government started procurement on a massive scale.
The procurement programme must be either significantly scaled up or be carried out more quickly to prevent the farmers losses. It’s understandable government will not be able to buy all 35 million tons of rice that Bangladeshi farmers grow a year but the least government can do is dictate the market by fixing floor price for rice for private buyers and sellers. The government also needs to streamline its paddy procurement process so that farmers and not traders are benefitted and it has to reign in the profit-mongering middlemen, millers who made most of the paddy profits depriving the principal stakeholder – the farmers.
Woe betides us if the farmers stop production of rice and grow other more profitable cultivables like tobacco. We see that Food and Commerce Ministries are not competent enough to deal with the rice market. Price fluctuation of rice in local markets is very common. Despite bumper production, four million tones of rice were imported last year. The persons who are responsible for creating an abnormal situation playing game with the fate of farmers cannot go unchallenged.
