Modernising agriculture

Photo: Firoz Gazi / Driknews

Kshirode C. Roy's article entitled “High tech agriculture in Bangladesh” published recently in the Science & Life page of this daily is an informative article indeed. However, food crisis is a matter of concern in our country, where there is 1.36 percent population growth and one percent reduction in cultivable land every year. But efforts are being made for overcoming the food crisis.
As a result, this year's abundant Boro rice production has made us think of exporting rice. This has been made possible through adopting modern technology in agriculture.
Some of the important operations like irrigation, tillage, weeding and threshing rice have already been mechanized. This has contributed a lot to the achievement of self-sufficiency in rice production in the country. Farmers in our country are yet to use rice transplanter, reaper and combine harvester massively, which would be cost effective in comparison to high labour cost. It may be mentioned that even after having good paddy production this year, farmers incurred loss due to this reason.
Moreover, many hybrid seeds of rice, maize, vegetables and other crops can now be grown all the year round. However, using deep tube-well, chemical fertilizer and pesticides are also part of modernization in this sector. But now it is proven that excessive use of these is hazardous to people's health and environment. So we hope agriculture officials of our country would keep people's safety in mind.