Agriculture Minister Muhammad Abdur Razzaque on Saturday said the government has a plan to produce 50 per cent of the annual demand for edible oil in the country in the next three years.
He said this while talking to journalists after inaugurating a workshop on annual research assessment at the auditorium of Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) in Gazipur.
The minister said the mustard farmers are being benefited financially by cultivating such hybrid varieties of mustard redesigned by the country’s agriculturalists.
The ministry has taken a massive initiative to boost mustard production as the produced crops cannot impact on the market, Razzaque said.
“We have taken an initiative to produce 40 to 50 per cent of the demand for edible oil in the country by the next three years,” he said.
Underscoring the need for research to produce paddy, he said the amount of agricultural land has decreased in relation to the population.
There is no alternative to producing more paddies to cope with the increasing demand for rice, he said, adding that the redesigned varieties of paddies will be extended rapidly.
An unbiased research is needed to find out the reason behind the price hike of rice despite bumper production of paddy, he observed.
