Agricultural experts at a programme have called for boosting agriculture for achieving food security and reducing malnutrition through increased environmentally sustainable agriculture production in the country’s southern region.
Addressing a seminar organised by BRAC at its Mohakhali head office on Tuesday, they said salinity, water logging, lack of proper irrigation facilities and natural disasters are hampering agriculture in the region, which is most vulnerable and lagging behind in agriculture than other parts of the country. The programme was told that about 1.0 million rice land is severely affected by salinity in dry and flooding in wet season of coastal region of Bangladesh. Farmers mostly grow low-yielding traditional rice in monsoon (Aman) season.
The experts said most of these lands remain fallow in the dry (Rabi/Boro) and pre-monsoon (Aus) seasons. The productivity is very low, much less than most of Bangladesh.
They opined for taking plan for boosting horticulture and shrimp and vegetable farming, converting single cropping area to double or triple cropping area to enhance food security, introducing short-duration HYV rice to accommodate high-value non-rice crop in the popular rice-rice pattern and introduction of stress tolerant rice to combat the adverse effect of climate change.
Upholding the interests of farmers, they underscored that all need to work together for enhancing agriculture in the region.
Anwar Faruque, Director General, Seed Wing and Additional Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, attended the function as the chief guest.
Mohammad Abu Hanif Mia, Director General, Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE), Dr. Mohammad Kamal Uddin, Executive Chairman of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) and Dr Babar Kabir, Senior Director, Water Sanitation and Hygiene of BRAC, among others, spoke on the occasion.
Dr. Mohammad Sirajul Islam, Programme Head, Agriculture and Food Security Programme of BRAC, presented the key-note paper on BRAC’s Intervention in Increasing Resilience of Agriculture and Aquaculture Systems in the South.
He said there are huge lands lying uncultivated in the southern region. “Those lands should be brought under cultivation. There is also a marketing problem as the farmers failed to sell their products due to proper marketing facility, which affected the growers,” he added.
He called for making more investment and bringing the South under modern agriculture and stressed on coordination between the Agriculture and LGRD Ministries. – Staff Reporter
