Scientists, agricultural experts and researchers from international organizations on Sunday stressed the need for policy reforms and targeted investments for creating greater access to fish as a source of nutrition for poor households.
Though aquaculture has enabled over 2 million people to escape poverty from 2000-2010, the country’s fisheries policy is yet to adapt the changes eventually made by the aquaculture, they said at the function while unveiling a book titled “The Making of a Blue Revolution in Bangladesh: Enablers, Impacts and the Path ahead of Aquaculture” at a local hotel.
Growth in aquaculture which also called a blue revolution has been responsible for almost 10 percent of the overall poverty reduction in Bangladesh from 2000-2010. In other words, of the 18 million Bangladeshis who escaped poverty during 2000-2010, more than 2 million managed to do so because of aquaculture, they said.
Bangladesh Policy Research and Strategy Support Program under the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) arranged the programme with Fisheries and Livestock Ministry Secretary Raisul Alam Mondol in the chair.
IFPRI’s South Asia Director and also a co-editor of the book Dr Shahidur Rashid said the book provides the evidence needed to improve aquaculture policies in Bangladesh as the book, based on the first comprehensive survey of the primary fish value chain in the country, examines three broad aspects of Bangladeshi fish aquaculture’s transformation.
Increased aquaculture investment and productivity, fish production will continue to grow through 2030 and outpace demand. “With the right targeted investments, poor households will benefit from even lower farmed fish prices,” added Rashid.
The share of fish aquaculture or ‘pond culture’, that is, cultivation of fish in ponds, both for household and commercial consumption, in fish production increased from 30 percent to 47 percent from 2000 to 2015.
