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Shantimoy Chakma, Rangamati, The Daily Star, 03 March 2008
“Only God knows what we will eat after a week. The Tk 1000 given by the government will provide for only seven days’ food,” said Samor Singh Chakma, an indigenous farmer while receiving the relief money at Thegamukh, a frontier village in Barkal upazila in Tangamati district.
“We have nothing to survive as most of the crops including paddy have been eaten up by rats this year”, he said.
The government relief is too scanty as there will not be any food crop in the hills in coming months, said Gayana Ranjan Chakma and Bhottya Chakma.
They are a few of the scores of victims of the rat invasion in Barkal and other areas in Rangamati and two other hill disticts.
The loss of crops to rat invasion followed a massive flowering and fruiting of bamboo clusters this year.
The CHT affairs ministry has allocated Tk 7 lakh to face the food crisis in Rangamati. Of the amount, Tk 5 lakh were distributed by Rangamati Hill District Council (RHDC) to 453 families in Hupbang, Thegamukh and Kukichhara in Borahorina union. The rest Tk 2 lakh has been allocated for affected people in Sazek union in Baghiachhari.
Each affected family got Tk 1,000.
RHDC chairman Jagat Jyoti Chakma, its member Bihari Ranjan Chakma, along with local Union Parishad (UP) chairmen and members and law enforcers distributed the relief in last few days.
Many affected families are still out of relief programmes in different areas.
Sources said only about fifty percent of the hill people could be covered under the current programme taken up by the government in Rangamati. The rest will remain out of food security, they said.
The government’s special relief programme in Rangamati covers Sazek in Baghaichhari, Hupbang in Barkal and Borthalipara in Bilaichhari upazila. Other parts of hilly areas in Rangamati, Bandarban and Khagrachhari are still out of the food safety net.
As a preliminary step, UNDP is distributing 20 kilograms of rice, edible oil, one kg of salt and a rat killing tool to each family in some areas.
The Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) are training farmers in rat killing, said its official Kajal Kanti Talukder.
Talking to this correspondent, Borahorina UP chairman Binoy Krinchna Chakma said, “I can give only some quantity of rice under VGF (vulnerable group feeding) and VGD programmes. But it is very limited.
“After finishing paddy, swarms of rats are now eating banana, ginger, turmeric and other fruits and crops,” said Pulin Karbari of Thegamukh.
Many families in different areas of Barkal upazila left homes in search of livelihood, he said.
About 35,000 families in inaccessible Sazek union under Baghaichhari upazila of Rangamati district are in utmost food crisis. A famine like situation is prevailing there, the village headman said.
At least 200 families in Sazek union left their homes for Mizoram and Tripura of India in search of livelihood, local public representatives told The Daily Star correspondent.
About 35,000 families of five ethnic communities– Chakma, Tripura, Pankhua, Lusai and Riyanglive in 607 square kilometers area in Sazek union. Cultivation and collecting bamboo from forests are their main sources of survival.
Earlier, the ministry of CHT affairs allocated Tk 15 lakh for the three hill districts, which has already been distributed among affected farmers.
RHDC executive officer Tarun Kanti Ghosh said a decision has been taken to allocate 700 metric tones (MT) of food grains for food for work programme in Rangamati. Of this, 300 MT will be distributed in Sazek, 200 in Bilaichhari, 150 in Barkal and 50 in Jurachhari upazila. Other development schemes are also on cards, he said.
Jagat Jyoti Chakma said RHDC along with UNDP will conduct a survey soon to assess the exact number of affected families. World Food Program (WFP) is also contemplating resuming RMP (road maintenance project) projects as a long term assistance program for the affected people.
“We also submitted two projects to CHT affairs ministry. One is raising mixed fruit gardens and the other is goat rearing project,” he added.
Staff Correspondent, Bogra, The Daily Star, 03 April 2008
Army chief General Moeen U Ahmed yesterday said the country is experiencing a food crisis to some extent and the government is trying its best to overcome it.
He suggested adopting a habit of eating potato with rice to ease the pressure on the staple.
“The only problem in the country at present is to make food available for everyone,” Gen Moeen said after visiting a farmers’ market set up under the supervision of the army at Chelopara in Bogra city.
Stressing the need for growing the habit of eating potato, Moeen said, “Eating potato with rice will reduce the demand for rice while fulfilling the nutrition requirement.”
The army chief appreciated the initiative for setting up the farmers’ market for direct marketing of farm produce. He said such markets would be set up across the country to help decrease the number of middlemen, which will benefit both the buyers and sellers.
He assured the farmers of taking initiatives so that the market is not evicted with the change of government and developing the marketplace as a permanent business centre.
Gen Moeen noted that the country faced natural disasters last year but nobody had to starve to death. “We all tried and succeeded in tackling the situation,” he said.
UNB adds: The army chief said the Food Department has already started selling rice at fair price on the open market and the government is increasing rice allocation and the number of dealers.
“More people will be able to buy rice at fair price [at Tk 25 per kg] and save money,” he said.
He said 78 lakh tonnes of potato has been produced across the country in the current season and the production of wheat also almost doubled. He hoped there would be a bumper production of Boro paddy this season as the supplies of seeds, fertilisers and power were normal.
Bogra Area Commander and GOC of 11 Infantry Division Major General Muhammad Shamim Chowdhury, senior army officials and government officials accompanied the army chief.
Meanwhile, Naznin Moeen, wife of the army chief, yesterday inaugurated Millennium Scholastic School in Jahangirabad Cantonment area in the city.
The Daily Star, 03 May 2008
The call by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for a top-level task force to address the issue of the spiraling cost of food worldwide is precisely the kind of co-ordinated global action that is necessary at this precarious moment in history, and could not have come at a better time.
The secretary general’s other suggestions, that the World Food Programme needs to be fully funded, that key producer nations should not ban exports, and that bio-fuels need to be reconsidered in light of the current crisis, are also all well taken.
Most urgent is the extra $755 million needed by the WFP due to the sharp jump in global food prices to stave off hunger in dozens of impoverished countries around the world. The WFP feeds the poorest of the poor, who face starvation otherwise, and the fact that it has in hand only $18 million of the extra $755 million necessary is a disgrace that Ban did well to call attention to.
In addition, his statement, which echoes, among others, those of Oxfam and the UN Special Rapporteur on Right to Food, on the disastrous consequences of bio-fuel, especially bio-fuel subsidies, on the food supply, are salutary, and heartening. A much-needed rethink on the balance between bio-fuels and food is underway.
The UN chief’s call on food-exporting nations was also a welcome one. Current bans or limitations on exports have led only to hoarding and speculation, not lower domestic prices in those countries, with the ultimate result that food has not been reaching those most in need of it.
This is indeed a global problem, and it is good that UN and similar organisations are both aware of the magnitude of the crisis, as well as the need to look at tough solutions and, in Ban’s words, the “urgent necessity to address structural and policy issues that have contributed to the crisis.”
For, make no mistake about it, it is a crisis and the crisis is global, and, as such, the solution can only be global. There is much that individual countries must do and are doing for themselves, but the fact that it is understood that this a global crisis, requiring global solutions, is a good thing.
Star Business Report, The Daily Star, 04 May 2008
A renowned economist yesterday said unprecedented food price hike might have pushed 80 per cent people of the country down to the poverty level.
“Eighty percent people of the country may now be living below the poverty level,” said Professor Muzaffer Ahmad at the concluding session of a workshop in Dhaka.
Reffering to a research, he said generally around 40 per cent people of the country tend to live below poverty line, with another 40 per cent who are very vulnerable to falling below the poverty line, adding that any unprecedented disaster or price hike would push this segment of the population down the poverty level.
Institute of Media and Communication Studies organised the two-day workshop on ‘the role of media to ensure food security’ at Chhayanaut Sangskritik Bhaban.
It is the responsibility of the state to fulfill minimum food requirement of its citizens, Muzaffer said, adding that only a democratic state can play this primary role effectively.
He citied the famine of 1943 saying that it was not food shortage rather the distribution problem had caused the tragic manmade famine.
“A country, in which media is controlled by the government, cannot perform its responsibility of distributing food to all properly,” he said.
He also said with appropriate methods and useful research it is possible to increase food production of the country significantly.
Economists Prof Wahiduddin Mahmud and Prof Atiur Rahman and journalist Shaikh Siraj of Channel-i, among others, spoke at the workshop.
M. Abdul hafiz, The Daily Star, 05 May 2008
All the evidence suggests that the food crisis now gripping the world will only aggravate over time, and may even trigger conflicts. Indeed, it has already rocked several countries, including Bangladesh, where simmering discontent over scarcity and spiraling prices of cereals has been becoming volatile, with the public ire targeted at the authorities unsuccessfully grappling with the issue.
While the government has been toppled over the chronic food shortage in Haiti, food riots are reported from Egypt and the Philippines. Elsewhere in the world the experience isn’t dissimilar.
Only a few days back, the United Nations said that the “silent tsunami unleashed by costlier food” threatened 100 million people. In London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Britain would seek changes to EU bio-fuels plans if it was shown that planting crops for fuel was driving up food prices. The World Food Programme (WFP) chief Jossete Sheeran highlighted the critical situation caused by decline in food stocks and surge in prices that has hard hit the world’s hungry — the poor and the destitute.
Notwithstanding this widespread concern over the looming disaster, so multifaceted are its causes that it becomes difficult to see how the global food shortage can even begin to be tackled. As a matter of fact, the whole planet is involved in addressing this basic human problem. Yet, a beginning in the direction of saving the humanity from hunger has been long overdue.
At long last, a warning bell seems to have been rung. On April 13, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) along with the World Bank called for urgent action to attend not just the present crisis but also the need for medium term development in the region most vulnerable to falling food supply and spiraling prices.
At the very basic level, the problem is that food production has failed to keep pace with population growth and its increasing food requirements. Also, the early effects of climate change have started to take their toll. The UN estimates that fertile land equivalent to the size of Ukraine (609628 square kilometer) is lost every year across the world to climate change related phenomena such as deforestation, drought and erratic weather. The FAO reveals in a report that crop yields in major food exporting countries like Australia and Ukraine — the bread-baskets of the world — have already taken a hit from “unusual weather events.”
In the developing countries, the element of desertification linked with global warming has been eating away vast chunks of arable land, while fertile coastal regions are under threat of rising sea-level occasionally resulting in tidal bores and cyclonic storms. The production of essential food items is being adversely affected by the shortage of water in vast swathes of Asia, West Africa and Central America.
The push for grain-based ethanol is, in the meantime, diverting corn from human consumption, as is the growth of livestock farming. The economic boom in parts of Asia has significantly increased the demand for meat. As a result, the grain that could feed people is instead being fed to cattle.
Compounding the problem, the rising fuel prices have substantially increased the cost of shipping and transporting of food, besides making farm inputs like fertilisers more expensive. Even in countries where the staples are available, they are beyond the reach of the poorest. Among the developing countries, “China and India carve out a bigger place at the table, and a new dinner guest — bio-fuel — threatens to become the biggest glutton of all,” according to a western analyst. The two emerging powers have the largest populations to feed and, hence, an enormous amount of food to grow to meet their needs.
According to Jossete Sheeran, the current food crisis is the biggest challenge in her organisation’s 45 year history. “The era of cheap food is over,” said Rajat Nag, managing director-general of Asian Development-Bank. He urged the Asian governments not to distort markets with export curbs but use fiscal measures to help the poor.
To combat the impending crisis, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan’s stress, however, is more on climate change which, according to him, is fast aggravating and could bring about a major hunger disaster.
However, neither the global shortfall in production nor the fuel prices are entirely to blame in our country. Smugglers, politically connected hoarders, and syndicated mafias also create artificial shortages even in bumper years to profit from the misery of the people. Happily, there is now a growing consensus among the experts that food security should, without delay, be placed at par with national security issues, and anything related to be food treated on a war-footing.
Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.
Afp, Madrid, The Daily Star, 05 May 2008
Soaring prices for food staples, especially for rice which have tripled over the past year, could lead to social unrest in Asia, Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga warned Sunday in Spain.
“The recent hike in the price of rice will hit Asian countries particularly hard. The ones who are most affected are the poorest segment of the population including the urban poor,” he said at a meeting of the Asian Development Bank.
“It will have a negative impact on the living standards and also affect their nutrition. Such a situation may lead to social untrust and unrest and therefore safety nets addressing the immediate needs of the poorest are needed,” he added.
Prices for the benchmark Thai variety of rice, a food stable across much of Asia, are at about 1,000 dollars a tonne, up threefold from the last ADB annual meeting held in Japan one year ago.
Global food prices have nearly doubled in three years, sparking riots last month in Egypt and Haiti, protests in other countries and restrictions on food exports in Brazil, Vietnam, India and Egypt.
Nukaga warned that export restrictions lead to higher prices while food subsidies to help the poor deal with surging prices could place a tremendous burden on state budgets.
“Export restrictions will not only distort the proper functioning of markets in price formation but further exacerbate the price hikes in international markets,” he said.
“Subsidies that are intended to keep food prices under control have the risk of becoming a significant burden to budgets and are not sustainable over time,” he added.
Food subsidies in Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations in Asia, are estimated to double in the current fiscal year and reach over 1.5 billion dollars (973 million euros) in the current fiscal year.
The ADB announced Saturday on the opening day of its four-day annual meeting that it will provide soft loans to help Asian countries subsidise the price of food staples for the poor.
It will also provide two billion dollars in 2008 and 2009 in loans to finance agriculture infrastructure projects such as irrigation systems and rural roads aimed at boosting farm output in the region.
Rising use of biofuels, trade restrictions, increased demand from Asia to serve changing diets, poor harvests and increasing transport costs have all been blamed for the price rise.
Bijan Lal Dev, The Daily Star, 09 May 2008
AMID deepening hunger crisis, Bangladesh is gradually beginning to stand on her own feet. One standing crop, Boro, is going to change the scenario. The impact of the healthy farm condition is being reflected in the wholesale and retail markets of staple foods, and the prices are going down everyday. The lines in the Open Market Sales (OMS) shops are shortening gradually.
Although riots caused by spiraling food have been reported from Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Philippines, Indonesia, Haiti, Burkina Faso and Senegal prices, the government of Bangladesh has efficiently managed the situation through a concerted effort, and averted any untoward incident.
The number of OMS centres and BDR outlets, and per head quota, has been increased. Vulnerable Group Feeding and Vulnerable Group Development cards for the rural destitute have been increased. Besides, the allocations for Food for Work Programme, Test Relief and Gratuitous Relief have been increased to strengthen the social safety net.
The government allocated Tk one billion to generate immediate employment for the rural poor, which had an effect on the market, and the low-income families and fixed-income groups got great relief.
In contrast, lines in the OMS shops in Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and many other countries are getting longer every day. The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated that the world has four to five million tons of cereal stocks that could feed the global population for only 8-12 weeks. A UN study group said that prices of staple foods such as rice, maize and wheat are expected to rise. Since March 2007, prices of rice have soared 76%, for wheat 130% and soya beans 87%.
Unicef says that the impact of higher food prices is particularly marked in poor countries where 75% of a family’s revenue goes on food, compared to rich countries where just 15% of a household’s income is spent on meals. IMF warned that the price hike of food items could trigger social and political upheavals and security risks.
World Bank experts say that food price hikes have an effect on poverty in poorer countries, posing challenges in terms of nutrition and hunger. This might make it difficult to attain the targets for human development in the MDGs.
Thanks God, Bangladesh, being a member of the poor group, has escaped from the forecasted risks for the next 4-5 months at least. The increased potato production and expected bumper Boro (one of the two main rice that grows in Bangladesh, the other is Aman) and maize production, if no natural calamities occur in the next two weeks, gives strength the country to say “no” to the international forecasts.
The government has taken a good number of steps to sustain the comfortable situation in food production and supply.
Expecting a record 17.5 million tons of Boro rice this year (previous highest was 16.2 million tons in 2006), harvesting of the crop has started in the haor areas of Sunamganj, Kishoreganj and Netrokona districts. As ensuring fair price at the growers’ level is the best way to raise the morale of the farmers to grow more in the next season, the government has been acting promptly and properly. It has already started procuring Boro rice and paddy from April 16, beginning from Sunamganj district.
The procurement price for rice has been set at Tk 28 per kg, up from Tk 18 a year ago. It has set a target of procuring 1.2 million tons of rice during the drive and, if needed, it will procure more. During the drive, the government will also buy 0.3 million tons of paddy from growers at Tk 18 per kg. Farmers across the country have been expressing their happiness over the procurement price, as they could make a profit at that price.
The government considered five aspects in fixing the procurement prices. These are cost of production, farmers’ incentives, consumers’ interest, enhancement of government food stock and market price. The government estimated the production cost at Tk 19.23 and Tk 13.19 for a kg of rice and paddy respectively, which is close to the production cost, Tk 20.80 for a kg of Boro rice on an average, estimated by the Centre for Policy Dialogue.
According to the government’s estimates, the cost of Boro production went upto Tk 68,928 per hectare this year from Tk 46,115 last year, mainly due to increase in the prices of fertiliser, seeds, irrigation and insecticides. It is expected that the government could achieve procurement targets this time as the prices have been fixed considering 40% profit on production costs.
Apart from procuring rice and paddy from the local markets, the government has a plan to buy another 1.7 million tons of rice from the global market to build a safe stock, keeping in mind the growing demand and the import in the year as the government imported 1.7 million tons during the first eight months of the current fiscal year. The government warehouses have the capacity to store 1.2 million tons of rice, which could be raised to 1.4 million. The government is planning to utilise vacant warehouses owned by other government departments for food storage.
The preliminary report of the Agriculture Ministry revealed that a record amount of 8 million tons of potato has been grown this season. It can be used with rice as 100 grams of potato contain 19 grams of carbohydrate. Similarly, it can be used as a vegetable as 100 grams of potato contain 2 grams vegetable proteins, 0.6 gram mineral salts and 2.2 grams dietary fibre.
A field report says that maize production will also increase by 30%, to 1.20 million tons this year from the last year’s production of over 0.70 million tons. Maize can be used as a substitute for wheat, although western countries are using huge amounts of maize and soya beans for making bio-fuels.
Due to bumper outputs of Boro, potato and maize, Bangladesh will be an exception in the least developed world upto the next monsoon so far as food is concerned. It will be a Herculean task to sustain this as 1%, that is 80,000 hectares, of agricultural land is being reallocated every year to non-agriculture sectors — rather, we can say, unproductive sectors — and some 5,500 new faces are being added everyday to the country’s population. Steps should be taken to convert country’s 3 million hectares of fallow land into agricultural land.
Agricultural practices will have to change radically to better serve the situation. For that, investment in agriculture should be enhanced to increase productivity and maintain soil fertility. On-farm resear ould be strengthened. New varieties should be developed to grow crops in saline and drought-hit areas. Products should be diversified on the basis of needs. Farmers should be trained on-the-field regularly. They should be provided with huge incentives, and fair prices of their produce should be ensured. Agriculture should be elevated to a commercial activity from the present sustenance stage through optimum use of land and other resources. Everyone should come forward to achieve this goal.
Afp, Manila, The Daily Star, 10 May 2008
Asia’s response to tightening global grain supplies has aggravated food price inflation and uncertainty, according to an Asian Development Bank report released here yesterday.
Export bans and price floors imposed by grain exporters including China, Pakistan, Vietnam and India “have increased price volatility and uncertainty in the international rice markets,” reducing supplies.
These have been “contributing significantly to the surge in rice price especially since the end of 2007,” the Manila-based lender said.
Among the importers, “precautionary demand for food stocks in many countries is contributing to food grain price increases,” said the report, which cited “sustained procurements” in international markets by Bangladesh and the Philippines.
The report, “Soaring Food Prices: Response to the Crisis,” said “strong political and economic factors ” were at play in the food policies of most developing Asian countries, “so that the effect of sharply higher international prices has not been fully transmitted to domestic prices.”
The bank said crackdowns by Dhaka and Manila on private traders accused of hoarding food grains were “difficult to implement” and have in fact “increased prices in the domestic market of many countries.”
The report also said the “lack of efficient logistics systems and infrastructure for food grain marketing and distribution” has “tightened the market further” in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, the Philippines, and Tajikistan.
The bank announced at its annual meeting in Madrid earlier this week that it will provide 500 million dollars in immediate assistance to member nations hit hardest by soaring food prices.
Longer term, the report urged Asian countries to correct “distortions arising from interventionist price and trade policies,” increased investments in irrigation, related farm infrastructure, and research, and upgrade of drying and storage facilities to cut post-harvest losses of up to 30 percent.
It also called for improved farmer and rural poor access to credit.
The ADB estimates that the soaring food prices could affect a billion people in Asia, home to two-thirds of the world’s poor and where spending on food accounts for 60 percent of total average expenditure.
Bank president Haruhiko Kuroda has also warned that the food problem could cut into decades of economic gains in the Asia-Pacific region.
Muhammad Zamir, The Daily Star, 10 May 2008
THE political leadership all over the world realise that it is important that the international community takes measures to not only ensure lower prices of food products but also food security. The FAO is meeting specially for this in Rome in June. The G-8 will also be meeting at the Summit level in Japan in July. The leaders of the industrialized nations will be specially focusing on this issue to find emergency and longer-term solutions. The significance of the deteriorating situation has also been underlined by the WFP when they launched an appeal for additional emergency donations to meet this ’silent tsunami of starvation’.
It is now generally agreed that an extra 100 million people, who previously did not require help, can now not afford to buy minimum quantities of food for themselves and their families. Soaring prices have also threatened anti-poverty and health improvement initiatives in the world’s poorest nations including Bangladesh. Millions in our country, who were not in the urgent hunger category seven months ago, today fall within that description. It would be interesting to note here that in 2007, rice price in Bangladesh rose by 42.6 percent on average while wheat posted a rise of 55.4 percent. Edible oil and milk powder increased by 42.8 percent and 48.9 percent respectively. We have had small demonstrations in Bangladesh (due largely to the existing state of emergency) but elsewhere in Haiti, Egypt, Gabon and Afghanistan the protests have been more violent.
The global increase in food prices have been blamed on rising populations, the use of bio-fuels aimed at combating climate change, higher demand for cereals for livestock (particularly in China to meet the growing demand of more protein for half a billion upwardly economically mobile Chinese), national disasters, a very poor rice crop in Australia and higher energy prices. This deteriorating scenario has been further exacerbated by latest statistics that revealed that global rice demand had risen by 0.9 percent last year, while production increased by 0.7 percent. It has also been mentioned that Asia’s rice stock is at its lowest in decades.
This has led to a scramble among heavily populated countries like China, India and Vietnam all of whom want to maintain their minimum levels of food security. They have consequently curbed their rice export. It is a similar story in Kazakhstan and Argentina (who deal in other surplus food staples).
In Bangladesh (as in many other developing countries) the focus is now on planners looking ahead towards food security within the country and also the region. This has led to Bangladesh proposing the formation of an international task force to address the global food shortage during the recently concluded UNCTAD XII session at Accra, Ghana. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has already initiated the necessary process in this regard. Such a pro-active and constructive engagement will definitely help in identifying the required strategic steps.
The Bangladesh economy has been hit very hard over the last three financial quarters. We have had natural disasters (affected 3.7 percent of our GDP) and then been hit by the double whammy of sharp rise in prices of food commodities (rice, wheat, sugar, edible oil, dairy products) and oil. Our economic development has also been severely hampered through the international price rise of steel, aluminum and capital machinery required particularly for our textile and energy sectors. Our anti-corruption efforts and quest for good governance have also slowed our pace of doing business and manufacturing compared to our growing import bills. Thank God for our remittances. Its steady presence has enabled us to withstand the economic shock.
The IMF, a few days ago, has pointed out that the soaring food bill will slow down economic growth in Bangladesh to 5.0 to 5.5 percent this fiscal year. It is also expected to cast a shadow on our balance of payments and on our already depleted foreign exchange reserves. Such assessments have been made on the presumption that the country, this fiscal year, is looking at increased food and fertilizer import bills of US dollar 630 million and relief and reconstruction costs of US dollar 850 million. There is also the huge crude oil bill. All of this is bound to impact on the already unbearable state of inflation. It was over 11 percent in January and is expected to moderate only slightly to 10 percent by end FY 2008.
I believe that this future scenario assumes darker shades; given the fact that availability of surplus staple cereal internationally will get scarcer in the near future. Following the recent trend, more food grain and cropping area will also be diverted to the production of bio-fuel and ethanol. This will happen despite the emerging disquiet among many environmentalists and economists that ethanol is not necessarily the best or the cheapest alternative to fossil fuel.
Given these circumstances, the only way out for Bangladesh appears to be sustainable agricultural development; so that we can meet our food grain needs sooner than later. The other alternative is to be like Singapore and be massively industrialized, so that we have enough earnings from export to feed the population.
In any case, in the meantime, we need to target a production level of at least 32 million tons of rice by mid-2010 so that we can have the semblance of food security.
The first step should be to carry out a renewed, intensive land survey of cropping area at the entire village level of the country. A lot of information already exists. I believe that this will help us to identify tens of thousands of hectares of potential arable unused land in the coastal zone, near water bodies, in waterlogged regions and in monga affected areas. The second step could be re-calibration by the relevant authorities of the national need, according to seasons, of quality of fertilizers (of the different types), pesticides and the profile of water management and distribution that is required for different crops. Lack of proper coordination, quite often results in under-utilization of scarce land area and eventually leads to reduced productivity. We just cannot afford such under-achievement anymore either by this interim administration or by any future political government (who in their own way should be finalizing the steps that they will be taking in this regard) after the next elections.
The third factor should be more emphasis on capacity building and creation of better procurement storage facilities (to avoid unnecessary loss due to rodents and decay). The pricing conditions for procurement also needs to be re-evaluated so that farmers are encouraged towards greater effort. The fourth factor is the transfer of better technology, use of more mechanised approach and agricultural credit extension within this sector. This could also include careful selection of genetically modified seeds so that yield can be substantially increased to match the levels in Vietnam, China, Thailand and India. This would also apply in the case of edible oil, spices, vegetables sand sugarcane.
These are important measures that will need to be monitored and objectively implemented. This could be achieved through a public-private partnership, with the private sector being given the encouragement of tax breaks as well as duty free import of required agricultural machinery and seeds.
The Department of Agriculture Extension has already taken the first correct step through their Taka 529 million project which aims to extend modern agro-engineering and technological know-how among the grassroots level farmers. This scheme was started in July 2005 and is now being implemented in 112 upazilas in 56 districts. Hopefully, this initiative will be carefully monitored on a continuous basis, to ascertain whether the farmers are learning cost-effective use of irrigation, surface water conservation, removing water stagnancy from cultivation fields, the benefits of cropping intensity, quality development of crops and proper application of agricultural machinery (like power-tiller, seeder, weedier, sprayer, self-propelled and power tiller operated reaper, power thresher, winnower and drier). The scheme should be replicated throughout the country if it is found to be successful.
We need to remember that food can loom as an engine of profit and also of protest. Today, increased demand is affecting the politics of scarcity throughout the developing world. The recent rise in global food commodity prices is here to stay. It is not just a short-term blip on our national economic radar screen. It also has latent socio-cultural implications. Without efficient farming methods (in view of our arable land scarcity and steady loss of farming area to homesteads) we might end up revisiting dire Malthusian predictions.
I have mentioned it before, both in the print and the electronic media, that time has come for the current interim, caretaker, non-political, technocratic government to sit seriously with representatives from different political parties, agronomists and economists, constitute a committee and agree on the requisite steps that need to be taken on a priority basis (before a political government is in place) to achieve food security. The points that will emerge on the basis of consensus from this committee could then be placed for consideration in front of our development partners. If we hesitate, we shall be left behind. There are many other developing countries competing for funds.
Muhammad Zamir is a former Secretary and Ambassador who can be reached at mzamir@dhaka.net.
Nurul Huda, The Daily Star, 10 May 2008
THE head of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Haruhiko Kuroda, asked for an immediate response to soaring food prices, which threaten a billion Asians with risk of malnutrition.
Sounding a note of warning, he said that the food problem could cut into decades of economic gains that the Asian-Pacific region has achieved.
“This price surge has a stark human dimension, and has greatly affected over a billion people in Asia and the Pacific alone,” Haruhiko said in ADB’s board of governors meeting in Madrid on May 5.
He deserves praise for the warning, and giving a call for a response to the situation as the purchasing power of the Asians has eroded, putting them at greater risk of hunger and malnutrition. Reduced supplies and increased demand, together with sharp appreciation of the US dollar and trade restrictions by some countries, have contributed to the price hike in recent months.
The ADB chief also called for “prudent macroeconomic management” along with targeted income support to protect food entitlement and livelihoods of the most vulnerable.
In this context, it needs to be recalled here that hundreds of thousands of Africans died after weeks and months of starvation and agony in the mid-1980s because of failures in development and environment. The famines in Africa are usually presented as the result of drought, but lack of rain has only been the immediate cause.
The causes of the famine stretch back over the decades, in patterns of over cultivation, over-grazing, soil erosion, deforestation and poor agricultural policieswhich have all severely damaged the African environment and reduced its capacity to grow food.
The decision makers of Asian countries, including those in Bangladesh, have to analyse the reasons behind the present situation and formulate innovative, concrete and appropriate plans to make sure that the African tragedy does not happen in Asia. And then they have to make sure that their plans are carried out.
Former Norwegian prime minister, Ms. Gro Herlem Brundtland, who was also chairman of World Commission on Environment and Development, in a feature carried by Earthscan of the International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED) in 1985 said: “Far too much development aid has been designed to benefit the donor more than the recipient.”
Hundreds of thousands of Africans are hungry, many of them are starving, because of the failure of donor agencies as well as of African governments to invest in economically and environmentally sustainable projects. Instead, donor agencies have poured far too much aid into prestige projects that the World Bank has called Africa’s white elephants, Ms Brundtland said.
The observation made by Ms Brundtland, more than two decades ago, appears to be partially applicable to Asia today. Earthscan in a book, Africa in crisis, said that at least 80 thousand expatriates were working in Sub-Saharan Africa under official aid programmes at a cost of $4 billion a year. And in 25 years of independence, Africa plunged from food self-sufficiency to widespread hunger and famine in the mid-1980s.
Holding European countries like Britain, Poland and Germany responsible for destroying fish and threatening forests through acid emissions of their power plants environmental experts said: “No nation should be free to pollute the common environment and inflict severe ecological and economic damage on other states.”
Environmental bankruptcy in different third world countries causes economic and political situations which force the poor, and especially the rural poor, to damage and destroy the soil, forests, rivers and coastal waters upon which they, in fact, depend for food, fuel and shelter. The situation which some of the Asian countries, including Bangladesh, have been passing through can be attributed to nothing but environmental bankruptcy.
The media has presented a picture on food crisis in Cambodia, where the World Food Programme of the United Nations can no longer supply 4,50,000 Cambodian children with a daily meal of domestically grown rice supplemented by yellow split peas from the United States and tuna from Thailand. When the breakfast programme was suspended in January, 2007 because of budget problems, attendance in some schools fell by 10 percent.
Poor Filipinos, who were hit by high food prices unseen since the 1970s, started getting some relief last week following the introduction of “rice passes” to the most impoverished families across the country. The Filipino government was also contemplating starting an unprecedented relief programme that would involve the distribution of cash subsidies amounting to $33 a month to each of the poorest Filipino families. These measures are two out of several steps that are being implemented by the Philippines government to mitigate the effects of the global food crisis.
Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Afghanistan have already witnessed street agitations over soaring food prices. Singapore, which is the second richest Asian country, has also been badly hit, and many Singaporeans cannot take regular baths and pay for laundry bills as a major chunk of their earnings goes for food.
Bangladesh policy planners should formulate strategies and plans for the country’s sustainable agricultural development without being influenced or biased by persons who are not familiar with our conditions. What is important for their successful implementation is involvement of local people with such plans so that they develop a sense of belonging.
Let us hope that the government will do everything possible to mitigate the miseries of those hit hard by soaring prices of essentials so that there is no starvation death in the country. None should, however, try to politicise the issue, as we are passing through a critical juncture at this time.
