2016: A year of success in agriculture

The year 2016 saw a tremendous success in the country's agriculture sector, thanks to the increased production of rice, jute, vegetables and different types of fruits.

Despite natural calamities like flood and drought and declining agriculture land, the production of rice, potato, onion, jute, garlic, fish, vegetables and fruits has increased last year.

Bangladesh has made new record of rice, wheat and maize production in the immediate past year.

The country has almost attained self-sufficiency in rice over many years. It is now the fourth major rice producing, fourth major fish producing, third major vegetable producing, fourth major goat producing and seventh major mango producing country in the world.

Country's food grain production (rice, wheat and maize) was 391.05 lakh metric tons in the fiscal year 2015-16 while cereal production was 9.396 lakh metric tons, potato production 94.64 lakh metric tons and onion production was 21.30 lakh metric tons.

New seed varieties

The government released three new rice, two potatoes and a wheat varieties in the year, aiming to increase country's food production.

Among the rice varieties, Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) has developed two and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University (BSMRAU) developed one.

The BRRI variety BRRI 78 is saline and drought tolerance and BRRI hybrid 5 is high-yielding while BSMRAU variety BU 2 is short and insensitive.

The National Seed Board (NSB) also released two new varieties of potato seed named BARI 72 and BARI 73. Those are saline and heat tolerance.

These varieties are specially developed to cultivate in southern area of the country by Tuber Crops Research centre at Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI).

A new wheat variety BINA 1 developed by Bangladesh Institute of Nuclear Agriculture (BINA) also got approval from the 90th meeting of NSB.

The new wheat variety is saline tolerable, short-term and high yielding. Farmers can produce it within 105-110 days.

Aman: After incurring losses in last two consecutive seasons, farmers are making some profits from the sales of paddy in this Aman harvesting season. Farmers are selling newly harvested paddy at Tk 770-Tk 850 per maund (37. 32 kg) in Kushtia, Dinajpur, Rangpur, Rajshahi and other areas, according to farmers and sources.

Agricultural economist Quazi Shahabuddin had earlier said that the farmers have not been able to realise the cost of production for a long time, so this is a good news that they are making some profits this season. He also said good returns from paddy sales will encourage the farmers to produce more paddy, which will increase country's rice production. 'This is a good start and I hope that this will sustain,' he said.

Jute: Jute farming has been increased in the country as farmers are getting better price of their produce due to rising demand of jute at home and abroad. Chaitanya Kumar Das, field service wing director at Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), said that farmers cultivated jute in more that one lakh hectares of land than the previous year and farmers got higher production.

He said farmers got eight maunds of jute per bigha last year and the total production may increase by 87 to 90 lakh bales in the country. Jute production target was set to 7.6 million bales last year.

Potato: Production of potato has reached all time high in the last fiscal year. The production of potato was 9.47 million tonnes in the country in the fiscal year 16 while it was 9.254 million tonnes in fiscal year 15, according to BBS.

Hilsa: A huge amount of Hilsa, the king of fish, was netted in the country last year. Dr M Anisur Rahman, senior scientific officer of Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute and also a Hilsa researcher, said that it is an overall success in the country's fishery sector. He said the government has taken initiative to stop catching Hilsa fry from 2004-05. Hilsa production has been increasing in the country at the rate of 8-10 percent every year.

News: Daily Sun