Agriculture and food security

Photo: STAR

Globally, the agriculture sector provides adequate food to prevent widespread hunger and starvation. However, food insecurity is aggravating day by day, resulting in an increasing number of undernourished/malnourished persons in the world as well as changing climatic conditions.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, while addressing the General Assembly debate on Least Developed Countries on March 11, said: "Millions of people have been pushed into poverty by the latest food price rises. I am especially concerned about the poorest households that often spend three-quarters of their income on food, and when prices go up they go hungry. My High Level Task Force is coordinating responses by the UN system to respond to immediate needs, build up local food markets and stimulate increased production."
In the first half of this century, as the world's population grows to around 9 billion, the demand for food and fibre will nearly double while, increasingly, crops may also be used for bio-energy and other industrial purposes. New and traditional demand for agricultural products will thus put growing pressure on the already scarce resources. And while agriculture will be forced to compete for land and water with sprawling urban settlements, it will also be required to serve other major frontsadapting to and contributing to the mitigation of climate change, helping to preserve natural habitats, protecting endangered species and maintaining a high level of biodiversity.
The ever-increasing population in the developing and the least developed countries like Bangladesh is also a major constraint to supplying enough food daily as per their basic demand. Around 90% of the rural population of Bangladesh is directly involved in agriculture and around 43.6% of the total labour force is engaged in agricultural activities. In order to control the increasing food production and attain food sufficiency a sustainable growth of the agricultural sector is required.
However, it would be a great challenge to attain food security while maintaining sustainable agriculture practices.
Besides, cost of agriculture inputs are also following an increasing trend in the recent years, which enhances the food price significantly. Production cost of agriculture commodities had also increased several times over the last few years. For example, in the current year, the government increased the price of urea fertiliser from Tk.12 to Tk.20 and fuel price by Tk.7 per liter (Tk.44 to Tk.51 per liter), and the prices of three qualities of ricecoarse, medium and fineincreased by 100%, 105% and 91.7% from 2005 to 2011.
Moreover, decreasing arable agricultural land in Bangladesh, together with increasing population and changing climatic conditions, make this challenge more acute.
Food production of Bangladesh will face a huge challenge while meeting the demands of the growing population in the coming decades. Bangladesh still has a very low level of nutrition as a whole. Many households and individuals do not eat a balanced diet, even during the years when there is good production. According to the World Bank, approximately 33 million of the 150 million people in Bangladesh cannot afford an average daily intake of more than 1,800 kilocalories (the minimum standard for nutrition as set by the World Food Programme). For people in most of the developing countries, the daily average calorie intake is 2,828. On the contrary, in Bangladesh that average is only 2,318.3. Therefore, it is imperative to increase food production in order to meet the growing demand for food.
The dominant food crop of Bangladesh is rice, accounting for about 94.55% to the total cereal crop production, playing a significant role in generating employment opportunity in rural areas, and at the same time making a vital contribution to reducing hunger and poverty.
In the fiscal year 1974-75, when the population was only 79.90 million, the total rice production was 11.1 million tons and the cultivated rice area was 10.32 million hectare. However, the country produced 32.257 million ton for its 148.69 million people in the year 2009-10. The ratio between the total population and production in FY 1974-75 was 6.36:1 whereas it was 4.61:1 in 2009-10. Therefore, rice production in Bangladesh increased by 2.91 times in 36 years, which is a great achievement, but it will not be at a high enough level to attain food sufficiency by 2013. In 1971-72, the average rice yield was 1.05 metric tons per hectare, while in 2005-06 it was 2.52 metric tons. Therefore, the average rice yield increased 2.4 times in the last few decades.
Most of the agriculture production is carried out on small pieces of lands. Moreover, the cropping intensity along with the cropping pattern plays a vital role in the whole production system. Besides, high yielding crop varieties, modern technology, new management practices such as irrigation, fertiliser, crop management etc., are used as well to improve the production rate.
For an example, application of fertilisers increased several times on the same piece of land. In 1975-76, fertiliser application was 0.36 kg per hectare of agricultural land, whereas it was above 298 kg in 2007, and the high yielding varieties covered more than 70% of the total cultivable land area.
Bangladesh's population is increasing at a rate of two million every year. UN's Population Division has predicted that the population will be 194.353 million in 2050. According to the total population for the targeted year, the total rice demand will be 49.07 million ton, which is more than 50% of the total rice production in FY 2009-10.
Therefore, rice production must be increased at a certain rate for ensuring rice security in the future, otherwise, a major part of the country's population might remain deprived of food, facing a major crisis in hunger and malnutrition. Consequently, our next generation is going to face a great challenge for their daily food due to changing climatic conditions along with the pressure of a huge population.

The writer is a researcher at Unnayan Onneshan.
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