Due to rapid urbanisation in the country, around 3 per cent of farm households or ‘Krishi Khana’ have withdrawn from agriculture-based livelihood in the last decade, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
A BBS source said the fieldwork for Agriculture Census-2019 has already been finished, adding that data analysis is going on and the final report would be out within December this year.
The census would include a national analytical report and 64 separate reports for each district. Data capturing, which amounts to 90 per cent of the task, is almost complete, the source added.
"Aside from two districts, data capturing has been completed for all districts. Now, analysis is ongoing," census project Director Alauddin Al Azad told The Business Post on Wednesday.
Mentioning that the analysis process is complicated and requires perfection, the project director said that the data would go through three stages of scrutiny and verification.
Despite the intricate process, the report is expected to be out by December, he added.
The census questions on food safety were prepared as per the Sustainable Development Goal indicators. The agriculture census is carried out every 10 years. The ranking of major and minor crops can vary based on the census.
Primary results from the Agriculture Census-2019 showed that the number of "Krishi Khana" or farm households dwindled to 53.82 per cent, which is 2.92 per cent lower than 2008.
The number of Krishi Khana was 72.10 per cent in 1983, 66.18 per cent in 1996, and 56.74 per cent in 2008. The number of farmer families is dwindling at a continuous pace.
The first agriculture census in the country was carried out in 1960. The last one was done in 2008. The process for the 6th agriculture census is going on now.
Agriculture census is carried out to learn the real situation regarding the structure and features of Krishi Khana, crops, fisheries, livestock resources, land usage etc.
Information was collected from June 9 to June 20 in 2019 for the Agriculture Census-2019.
According to the latest census data, the total number of families in the country is 3,55,33,180. Among them, 1,65,62,974 families are involved with farming. Out of them, 6,17,855 families live in cities and 1,59,45,119 families live in villages.
Meanwhile, 9,95,135 farming families are dependent on fish farming while 90,95,977 on farm labour.
Another 40,24,189 farming families have no land, and 67,63487 families have leased land from others.
The most farming families with no land of their own live in Dhaka division. Out of every thousand families in this division, 684 do not own land.
The number of landless farming families out of a thousand is 241 in Rajshahi division, 317 in Rangpur, 275 in Chattogram, 269 in Khulna, 169 in Mymensingh, 221 in Sylhet, and 92 in Barishal.
