Rice figures mismatch

Trading continues at a wholesale paddy market of Bauphal upazila in Patuakhali. Farmers who came to the market returned frustrated as the prices were much lower than what they had expected. The photo was taken a few days ago.Photo: STAR

It comes as a shock for those who believe Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in food production.
A new study has found that over the years, rice production has been reported noticeably inflated. At least in one year, it was inflated as much as 3.5 million tonnes.
On the other hand, consumption has also been shown at least about 10 percent less than actual.
Similarly, waste of grain and use of it as seed and feed have been calculated 20 percent less than actual, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), a leading research organisation, found in a new study.
The net result is that Bangladesh has been formulating its food policy on the wrong notion that it has a good surplus of grains.
BIDS has come to such conclusions after studying government records, especially those of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), its own field surveys to judge the BBS figures and then doing various literature reviews.
BIDS was engaged by the food ministry to look into the issue as it felt that in matters of food distribution, procurement and import, it could not quite match the agriculture production figures. It rather became a paradox why food import requirement is so high if the production figures are correct.
Bangladesh imported 5.5 million tonnes of food grain in 2010-11 and 3.4 million tonnes in 2009-10.
BIDS studied the food chain from production to consumption, checked on acreage, yield, gross production, waste and availability of grains for human consumption.
It also checked the figures generated by the BBS through its agriculture census, agriculture sample survey and statistical year book and then crosschecked them with images generated by Bangladesh Space Research and Remote Sensing Organisation (SPARSO).
Such crosschecks revealed that although there is not any significant change in yield, there was a remarkable difference in the area of land cultivated with rice.
Such area variation led to official calculation of 2.5 million tonne higher production.
For example, in 2008, a 60 percent higher area was shown in sample survey than in agriculture census for HYV Aman cultivation. While the sample survey shows 7.7 million acres of land under HYV Aman cultivation, the census shows only 4.8 million acres of land.
Total Aman cultivation was shown at 25.8 million acres in the survey while the census showed 21.8 million acres.
The BBS says the country produced 32 million tonnes of rice in 2009, but the BIDS estimates it at 28.7 million tonnes.
According to an agriculture ministry official, such higher than actual figures are generated because the block supervisors of the ministry, who send production report tend to overestimate areas.
This is the common practice in Aman season because mostly rice is produced during this period, allowing the supervisors to inflate figures.
BIDS also checked if the amount of food shown as being wasted or used as seed and feed is correct.
The government officially shows 10 percent of the total production is wasted and used as seed and feed. But the BIDS estimates this figure to be 12 percent for rice and 15 percent for wheat. Other countries also use similar figures. For example, India estimates 12.5 percent of its grain for these three heads.
Such less reporting by government inflates availability of food.
BIDS also felt that a major weakness of the BBS estimate is that it does not take into account the food people take outside home, which has an impact on total consumption.
Again it was found that BBS estimate of consumption is underreported because of exclusion of outside home consumption.
While the BBS figure for 2010 shows that consumption of rice per person a day was 416 grams, BIDS claims it was 462 grams.
Dr Mahabub Hossain, executive director of Brac and an agriculture economist, told The Daily Star that the BIDS revelation that Aman cultivation area is overestimated is true. “But the waste, feed and seed figure given out by the government is not correct.”
“And the BIDS estimation of consumption is also not correct.”
He said BIDS had taken farmers with larger landholdings as its samples which were not representative and its model to show income elasticity on consumption is also not correct.
“So, the thin surplus that the BIDS estimates is not that thin, but it obviously is not as good as the government shows,” he said.
“The government's production estimate makes about 3-4 million tonnes surplus, which is very high and not realistic,” Dr Hossain said. “If the government's estimate was correct then per head rice consumption would have been 200 kg a year which is not anywhere in the world. Even the BBS' Household Income and Expenditure Survey shows consumption at 160 kg a year.”
Asked about the BIDS study, Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury told The Daily Star yesterday that she was not aware of what the BIDS study came up with.
"Food production in the country has increased in recent years….that's our satisfaction. We never tend to inflate food output figures.”