Home ›› 04 Nov 2022 ›› Editorial
According to a recent agency report Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has urged the youth to make greater efforts at boosting food and agricultural production to keep Bangladesh free from any worldwide famine and economic recession.
“I would like to call upon our youth to take more initiatives for the production and processing of food items in their respective areas. If so, we’ll be able to fulfil the local demand and also help other famine-hit countries,” she said while addressing the inauguration of the National Youth Day-2022 and the ceremony of the National Youth Award-2022 at Osmani Memorial Auditorium through a virtual platform from her official residence Ganabhaban in Dhaka.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the recent years has urged all to bring their fellow lands under cultivation to avert food crisis and protect Bangladesh from the brunt of looming food crisis worldwide.
We are in complete agreement with her views regarding the issue. Here statements are driven by her keen observation of contemporary national and global reality. The impact of the global food crisis has naturally affected Bangladesh.
The price of food products in the country has shot up forcing the fixed income people cut their bags to size under the multiple effects of the Ukraine-Russia war. Russia and Ukraine combined is considered the world’s bread baskets. Coupled with this are the domestic hoarders, who are exploiting this situation on lame excuses to make quick buck by creating artificial crises.
The situation is made even worse by the reality that the recovery from the loss of pandemic for people from low-income backgrounds has been painfully at snail’s pace, meaning they are constrained to spend less for food in order to pay for rent, utilities and healthcare.
There are fears that if farmers are not able to pass on this rise in costs of production and get fair prices, many will give up on farming altogether. This is a huge threat to achieving food security. The alternative scenario – where higher costs are passed on to consumers – is equally grim. Ever since the pandemic, we have seen the prices of essentials continue to increase. Already, high costs of transportation are pushing up prices of vegetables and other foods brought into the cities from across the country. What we are witnessing now is nothing short of a cost of living crisis, and it will only get worse.
A later WFP survey has found that around 68 per cent of the population are battling to buy food. In this setting, we must take all conceivable measures to guarantee that the circumstance does not turn into a full-blown food crisis or starvation.
The potentially disastrous implications of the war in Ukraine for global food security are clear. Billions of people are on a trajectory towards hunger, poverty, and instability, driven by conflict, COVID-19, climate change, and rising food costs.
Bangladesh needs to increase production sustainably and without delay. However, immediate measures must be stepped up to stop the wastage of food, improve food storage facilities and transportation networks, and cultivate fallow land for food production.
To prevent the situation from turning bad to worse, combined efforts of all is important. But the relevant authorities must play the leading role in implementing the PM’s directives. Far too many glaring discrepancies remain in this regard.
Prudent measures are necessary to sustain and increase the current state of food production. It needs no emphasising that in order to make our production growth sustainable we need to adopt advanced technologies in the agriculture sector. In this regard, the government should take necessary steps to involve private sector and increase its investment in research and development of new technologies.
