September 2020, South Asia
Agriculture sector’s resilience on the wane: What to do?
Khondaker Golam Moazzem

The resilience of the domestic agriculture sector mainly of the crop sector appears to be in a weak state. Without proper policy intervention the pressure on the agriculture sector would increase further and would cause a number of challenges on food security for a large section of people in the coming months.

Although Bangladesh economy has been confronting multiple challenges since March 2020 in view of Covid-19 pandemic, the resilience of the agriculture sector mainly in rice production was a major relief for the country.

A number of positive intervention of the Ministry of Agriculture had ensured timely harvesting of Boro rice from major rice producing regions such as haor areas. Despite that production of non-crop agricultural products such as vegetables, poultry, dairy, livestock and partly fisheries have been badly affected.

And the government’s policy intervention (Tk 9,000 crore for farmers and Tk 3,000 crore for livestock, fisheries and agro-based rural enterprises) would not be of significant positive contribution.

Even the agriculture sector has been badly affected afterwards — first by cyclone Amphan in the south-western Part of Bangladesh and later by three consecutive floods, which caused significant damages in 33 districts, inundating one-third of the country.