Home ›› 04 Jun 2022 ›› Editorial
Agriculture contributes considerably to Bangladesh's GDP, maintaining a consistent annual growth between 3.0 and 3.5 percent, supplying food, and creating employment for about 40 per cent of the people. The sector acts as an essential component of industrial raw materials. Any setback in agricultural production may lead to a rise in the prices of essential products for the mass people, reducing their welfare and challenging socio-economic development.
The scope of agriculture is enormous, starting from crop production to fisheries, aquaculture, livestock, and poultry; all are significantly contributing to the protein needs of the country. Bangladesh boasts of its self-sufficiency in food in the context of increased rice production, which was only 12 million metric tonnes in 1970 and rose to more than 36 million MT today. Yet there are risks, especially climate change risks are enormous. They can make the sector vulnerable, increasing the poverty level to a great extent. How to prepare to ensure the sector's sustainability through adaptation and mitigation measures is a real challenge.
Bangladesh is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate catastrophes. The country faces frequent floods, droughts, riverbank erosion, coastal erosion, and cyclones that form in the Bay of Bengal. The southern coastal part of the country, where around 30 million people live, is often battered by climate-related natural disasters, which displace hundreds of thousands of people and inundate vast tracts of land. Intense and frequent flooding, heavy rainfall, tidal surges, and water salinity have also hurt crop production for the past few years, affecting farm workers, who account for around 60 per cent of the nation's labor force and 70 per cent of the rural poor.
Climate change impacts are being observed gradually and forcefully, and several laws and regulations have been enacted to adapt to and mitigate the adverse effects of climate change in the country. However, risks remain, and agriculture is the most vulnerable sector prone to climate change impacts. According to the global climate risk index(CRI) 2021, the position of Bangladesh is 7th among the ten countries most affected by climate change risks from 2000 to 2019. The number of events is 185; the CRI score is 28.33, fatalities are 572.50, and losses in million USD PPP are 1860.04.
Farmers in our country are guided by their experiential knowledge and can not always save their production from heavy rainfall, water-logging, and unpredictable climatic situations. Over the last several years, rice crop production has changed, where Boro dominates, which is dependent on irrigation primarily based on groundwater. Rain-fed irrigation with supplementary irrigation is almost not in practice. The contribution of Boro to the total rice production is about 20 million MT or about fifty per cent. If Irrigation is at risk for any reason because of depletion of groundwater, the country may face food insecurity.
Some of the visible changes we are observing are like rainfall which hampers agriculture production and, at the same time, increases health risks and reduces working potentials, especially for the poor and women who are agricultural wage earners. They need motivation and several adaptation measures, temperature stress-related, and microclimatic zone information. Agricultural wage earners are totally unaware of these issues and entirely dependent on nature and count their bad luck for any crop losses.
There is an early warning system for extreme climatic storms, floods, and heat waves to provide farmers with advance alerts to face challenges. Farmers themselves do not benefit from these arrangements as their preparedness capacity is very low. However, if the dams and bridges can be repaired on time, crops of the locality can be saved. So with the early warning, other protection measures and structural measures are required to protect standing crops from damage.
Seasonal change-long summer-February-October –erratic rainfall- information about these climatic changes is unavailable to the farmers. The unpredictability of cold waves in some coastal areas such as Satkhira and some other places hampers agro production. Fog in the winter season hampers seedlings. Some research in this regard is being done by the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE), however support services are inadequate.
Agricultural Information Services (AIS) and Climate Information Services (CIS) are now being provided by the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE). AIS is working under the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA). AIS disseminates information at the grass-root level. They provide information through the head office and eleven (11) regional offices. On behalf of the Agricultural Ministry, AIS works as Media Focal Point publishing and circulating agricultural information and agricultural development services on adaptation. Still, more are required to save farmers from crop losses. Fisheries and fish farmers, and livestock sectors also need information about climate change.
This organization provides Climate Information Services(CIS), generating hydroclimatic data, microclimate, and climate variability and matches this information with crop cultivation pattern and identifies types of products matching climatic conditions. They provide information on all types of Robi crops. They also need to disseminate CIS to the agro-traders who provide inputs, fertilizers, raw materials, seeds, machinery, and many more to the farmers.
A fish-farming activity calendar was developed that identified high temperature, cold spell, heavy rainfall, and dry spell events as key climatic phenomena affecting year-round aquaculture operations, including pond preparation and maintenance, fingerling stocking, grow-out management, and harvesting. It identified five climate-sensitive management decision points and 26 potential advisories in line with specific climate variability to manage induced risks in the day-to-day operations of fish farmers. A decision framework based on the temperature and rainfall thresholds for the grow-out phase of four widely cultivated and economically important fish species in Bangladesh has been developed.
Knowledge is the very first endeavor to develop CIS using species-specific temperature and rainfall thresholds to reduce climate risks and ensure resilience capacity for the aquaculture system.
Hydroclimatic variation (Rajshahi, flood plain areas), extreme weather information they collect and disseminate, and information for drought and salinity, which causes damage to the crops- this information they circulate through CIS and AIS and farmers' schools. This is an excellent initiative of the government. Through this information, farmers can select seed varieties and use these for farming. These support them in initiating improved farm practices. However, these project-based activities cannot reach the last line of marginal people for a long time.
People residing in the Char region and offshore people who produce fisheries, and poultry are not getting these support services. Through farmers' schools, overall information on agriculture can be disseminated. So far, rice and Robi crops-related information has been disseminated, some other agro products can also be included gradually.
Contract farming is in practice. However, they do not consider coastal areas regarding climatic practice at the farming level. In some years, they profit by trading. However, in some seasons, they face tremendous loss. Shrimp salinity is a problem. All stakeholders must be aware of climatic issues to reduce the loss of production.
If they are not fully aware of their loss and damage, exporters and those engaged in trading could bring a total loss for the sector. Information in this respect is very much required. Identifying entrepreneurs of each value chain actor are required.
SMEs are the worst sufferer. They need to internalize climate change-related information. They need to learn management practice so that risk reduction is possible. For their trade business in the SME sector, information is required. In the National Adaptation Plan, some proposals have been given, however, implementation challenges have to be addressed through appropriate policies.
International resilience has to be increased. Carbon emissions need to be reduced. By 2030 our exports can face challenges because of requirements for less carbon emission. A low-carbon strategy has to be developed. In that respect, information can be furnished in the national agro trade portal. With the government's specific activities, the private sector would need to come forward to support. The agro portal can include some information to encourage the private sector to come forward to help.
During the pandemic, export of the agriculture sector has not shown any slump. However, Bangladesh imported more than US$5 billion worth of food and agricultural products other than cotton in 2021, which was US$8.36 billion in 2020. Farming practice and educating farmers about climate change risk-related issues and preparing them accordingly would sustain agro-trade. In case of employment, as per BBS labour force survey 2016-17, about 22.7 million people are involved in agriculture, of which about 45 per cent are women. It means that any impact on agriculture will ultimately impact women. It should be a national priority to protect the sector from climatic impact and devise strategies accordingly.
Data inconsistencies and incompleteness are visible because future planning in terms of the structure of the food system becomes complicated. This may cause overproduction and underproduction in some seasons creating nutritional imbalance among poor households.
It has become imperative to protect agriculture from any substantial losses as many people depend on the sector, and climate vulnerabilities need to be focused on important national policies and food security.
The writer is CEO, BUILD-a Public Private Dialogue Platform. She can be contacted at ceo@buildbd.org
