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Agriculture Minister Md Abdur Razzaque has said that farming in Bangladesh is now getting more advanced and modern.
"The current government is working to make the country's agriculture more advanced and modern," he said at a discussion at CityCube Berlin in Germany on Thursday.
The discussion on the transformation of agriculture was organized by the World Bank and the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), said a press release on Friday.
The minister said the current government is working to build a profitable, resilient and sustainable agriculture system in place of the traditional agriculture system.
He called for more grants and investments from the World Bank and various international organizations to accelerate this initiative.
Highlighting the incredible success achieved in the agricultural sector of Bangladesh, the agriculture minister said that the first revolution in the country's agriculture took place immediately after the country's independence.
Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman started the agricultural revolution by taking groundbreaking steps for the development of agriculture, he added.
"...And the second revolution took place under the leadership of Bangabandhu's daughter Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 1996-2001 and in the last 14 years from 2009. Bangladesh achieved food self-sufficiency for the first time in 1999-2000," he added.
He said now the growth in the country's agriculture is more than 4 per cent per year. "Currently, four times more food grains are being produced than in 1971," he added.
Seven times more vegetables are produced than in 2008, he said, adding that Bangladesh today is one of the top 10 countries in the world in the production of various vegetables, fruits and food grains.
"This success in agriculture is being admired all over the world today," he said.
Later, Razzaque held a bilateral meeting with German Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture Claudia Miller. German lawmakers assured him of cooperation in the agricultural sector of Bangladesh in the meeting.
Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture of Bangladesh Ruhul Amin Talukdar, representatives of World Bank and FCDO were present, among others.
