Govt to help farmers buy agri tools

Amid the soaring cost of agricultural labour, the government is going to launch a project worth Tk 415 crore to give subsidy to the farmers for buying agricultural machinery so that they can harvest crops at a reduced cost.

Under the scheme, the government will offer 3,000 combine harvesters, 2,000 reapers and 300 transplanters to farmers and farm equipment renters at a subsidised rate during the ongoing Aman season and the upcoming Boro season, according to a letter sent by Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) to the Ministry of Finance last month.

The state will bear 60 percent cost of these machinery and farmers will have to bear the rest, according to the MoA letter seeking release of the fund.

The agriculture ministry takes the new scheme after implementing a similar project worth Tk 339 crore.

Under the previous project, the government provided subsidy up to 70 percent to farmers for buying agricultural machinery. The project ended in June this year.

The latest move comes in the face of soaring wages due to a shortage of farm labourers during the peak season of harvesting and transplanting rice, causing a loss in the yield of rice that is cultivated on 71 percent of the total 1.54 crore of croplands, according to official data.

The MoA in its letter said despite advancement in the agriculture production, costs of farmers are rising owing to high labour wages and inefficiency at various stages of cultivation.

“As a result, farmers fail to make a profit,” it added.

According to agriculturalists and industry operators, currently, farmers prepare more than 90 percent of total croplands by using power tillers and tractors.

A majority of grains, mainly rice, are threshed by threshing machines and the rate of mechanisation is growing as farmers find the use of agricultural machinery beneficial in terms of cost-saving and timely cultivation.

Yet, progress in the transplanting paddy and harvesting the staple crop has been sluggish over the years owing to the high cost of machines, lack of the machinery suitable for harvesting all types of soils and the dearth of operators and mechanics, said agriculturalists.

Prof Md Monjurul Alam of the Department of Farm Power and Machinery of Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU), said nearly one percent of paddy are transplanted and harvested by using machines.

Due to the shortage of farmworkers, growers have to spend a lot for hiring labourers in order to ensure the timely harvest of their grains, he said.

“We have seen that labour shortage goes up to 45 percent during the transplanting and harvesting season of rice,” he said, linking the deficit to the continuous shift of agricultural workforce to the non-farm sector.

Jobs in agriculture fell to 40.6 percent of total employment in 2016-17 from 47.3 percent in 2010, according to the Labour Force Survey by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.

Due to high demand and reduced supply, daily farm wages goes as high as Tk 600 during peak harvesting seasons up from nearly Tk 300 in slack seasons, said agriculturalists.

In its letter, the agriculture ministry said the surging cost of labour has been making farmers helpless during the harvesting period for the last several years on the one hand, and farmers are getting reluctant grow the paddy on the other.

The programme will be taken in all upazilas under 64 districts, said the MoA, expecting a 20 percent reduction in the cost of production and 10 percent cut of post-harvest losses.

“This is a kind of investment on the part of the government as the delay in harvest causes a loss of yield,” said Alam of BAU.

Replying to query on the suitability of bigger machines on muddy soils, Prof Alam said there would be no difficulties in using the combine harvesters during the Aman season.

“But there will be difficulty in harvesting Boro paddy in areas where the crop is cultivated on wetlands,” he said.

The BAU professor said rural road and irrigation infrastructure should be developed in a way that facilitates smooth movement of farm machinery along the roads and crop fields.

“To ensure after-sales services, we are imposing obligations on companies that will supply the machinery to farmers at a subsidised rate,” said Sheikh Md Nazim Uddin, member secretary of the technical committee on Agri-Machinery Subsidy Programme at the MoA.