A food crisis looms
large in Bangladesh after two waves of floods and a cyclone. Three
natural disasters within four months have ruined the late-monsoon aman
paddy, the second major cereal crop in the country. As a result, food
prices have soared and the government is finding it difficult to
procure rice.
Bangladesh is facing a shortage of at least 3 million tonnes of rice,
according to an assessment by the non-government think tank Centre for
Policy Dialogue and Bangladesh’s largest NGO, Brac.
“We usually have a rice shortage of 1-1.5 million tonnes a year, but
because of recurrent natural disasters there will be an additional
shortage of 1.9 million tonnes,” Mahbub Hossain, the executive director
of Brac, told reporters.
This time of the year, the government buys aman rice from farmers to
build food grain stocks, but this year it isn’t finding many sellers
because prices have risen sharply. It wanted to buy at least 200,000
tonnes of rice, but farmers are reluctant to sell because they are
getting better prices in the open market. The government has offered 20
taka (US $0.29) a kg for rice and 13 taka ($0.19) a kg for paddy,
whereas the market prices are 32-35 taka ($0.51) and 18-20 taka
($0.29). Even importing rice won’t be easy because food grain prices
are high in the global market as well.
The food and disaster management ministry
estimates the food deficit for this fiscal to be 2.96 million tonnes.
Of this, rice deficit is 1.4 million tonnes and wheat 1.56 million
tonnes. Demand for rice is pegged at 28.5 million tonnes. Agriculture
department officials are tight-lipped because news of production
shortfalls and shortage of stocks have caused a speculative price hike.
To soften the blow, the government has introduced its open market sale
of coarse rice at subsidized rates from January 9. The idea is that by
subsidizing coarse rice the government can bring down demand for fine
rice, thus easing pressure on its price. But fine rice prices are
creeping up despite the move, reports IRIN, the humanitarian news and
analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs.
The year 2007 had begun on a bleak note with boro crops, grown between
November and May, damaged over 53,000 hectares (ha) in single-crop
areas of Netrakona, Brahmanbaria and Kishoreganj districts. Farmers did
not get even 10 per cent of the normal yield. Then came two waves of
floods in August and September. In the first wave, the monsoon-swollen
Brahmaputra and the Meghna inundated nearly two-thirds of the country,
damaging crops on over 607,000 ha. When floodwater receded, farmers
began transplanting aman paddy seedlings again. Soon the second wave of
flood brought their work to naught and inundated 809,400 ha. The damage
the second flood caused to agriculture was beyond recovery, for the
deadline for planting aman paddy was over by then.
When farmers started growing vegetables and rabi crops such as pulses,
onion, garlic, gram and oil seeds after the end of the second deluge,
cyclone Sidr struck in November, damaging aman paddy in coastal
districts—less affected by floods—just before harvest. Sources in the
agriculture department say the two floods caused a loss of 600,000
tonnes of rice, while the cyclone caused a loss of another 800,000
tonnes.
Again it is time for sowing boro crops and the government does not want
to take any chances. To overcome losses this time, the government is
prescribing hybrid rice on 1 million ha of the targeted 4.38 million ha
for boro rice. Hybrid rice is expected to give an additional tonne of
yield per hectare compared to the high-yielding variety that gives 3.
67 tonnes a hectare, says Anil Sarkar, deputy director, department of
agricultural extension.
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