Wheat consumption soars on high rice prices

For Mohammad Shoriful Islam, a rickshaw puller living with his six-member family in Dhaka, life has been particularly hard since the pandemic outbreak in 2020.

With offices and educational institutions shut to contain the coronavirus transmission, his income took a nosedive, but food prices soared. “The cost of a kilogramme of coarse rice rose to Tk 48 from Tk 26. So, I started buying flour which costs Tk 28 a kg,” he told The Business Post.

Like Islam, many low- and middle-income people across Bangladesh opted for wheat flour instead of rice, a staple in this part of the world, to cut costs.

During the pandemic, about 3 per cent of the country’s labour force became jobless, and an estimated 16.38 million ‘new poor’ were created, according to a study by the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies and the Centre for Policy Dialogue released in April this year.

The report said that an estimated 1.08 million people in the construction, informal services and transport sectors had lost jobs. It predicted that small and medium enterprises and the informal sector would face the highest number of job losses at the end of 2021.

Available data show that wheat consumption increased rapidly in the country after the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent containment measures hit the people’s income and increased rice prices.

Wheat consumption in Bangladesh stood at 74,00,000 metric tonnes in FY2018-19. But it jumped to 7,750,000MT in FY2019-20, and 81,00,000MT in FY2020-21, according to data portal IndexMundi.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, Bangladesh’s wheat import increased by 36 per cent in the last five years. Bangladesh Bank data show that wheat import increased 10.85 per cent in the 2020-21 Fiscal Year compared to FY2019-20. The country imported wheat worth $1.83 billion in FY2020-21, up from $1.65 billion in the previous fiscal.

Bangladesh produced 12,00,000MT wheat in FY2018-19. It fell to 11,80,000MT in FY2019-20 and declined to 11,30,000MT in FY2020-21.

Different traders in Dhaka said wheat sales are generally good every year, but from the last two years, its demand has increased at a tremendous rate.

Mohammad Jafor Uddin, a grocery trader at Karwan Bazar, said that people were buying wheat flour more as the rice price is much higher. One kg of rice cost Tk 45-50 at least, where a kg of wheat costs around Tk 30.

Former director of Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute Mohammed Shoaib Hassan said wheat is a winter crop planted alongside mustard, lentil, potatoes, etc. That is why there is less land available for wheat. One of the reasons for low production is that since many vegetables are produced in the winter season, farmers grow more profitable vegetables.

Wheat production is declining as the land volume shrinks, he said.

Professor Dr Humayun Kabir, head of the Department of Agriculture Economics at Bangladesh Agricultural University, said the climate of Bangladesh is not very supportive of wheat production. Besides, the winter season here is short.

“Wheat production has declined as a result of climate change,” he said. “Import is our only option to meet the rising domestic demand.”