The government on Thursday fixed procurement prices of rice at Tk 22 a kg and of paddy at Tk 14 to collect a total of 3 lakh tonnes of rice in the next Aman season.
Bangladesh is still considered as a country with severe localised food insecurity due to historic uncertainty in crop production, deep poverty, concentration of internally displaced people and also influx of refugees, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Carrying the label of a food importing country, it belongs to the category of 31 nations that have long been living under the shadow of some kind of crisis requiring external assistance to make food available to people.
Poor and marginal farmers and sharecroppers keep facing trouble as they need to buy rice for higher prices after having sold the rice they would produce for low prices at the time of harvest. Market source said farmers were buying boro for prices between Tk 540 and Tk 600 a maund (37.3kg) but they sold it for prices between Tk 400 and Tk 430 soon after harvest. Most of the poor and marginal farmers said they were forced to sell their produces for prices lower than their production cost to meet their needs and repay loans they had taken before harvest in May.
Bangladesh is set to officially release three flood-tolerant rice varieties that would help farmers prevent up to a million tonnes of annual crop loss caused by flash floods, researches said. Officials concerned told The Daily Star that these rice varieties with submergence-tolerant gene, known as Sub1, can withstand two weeks of complete submergence.
The villagers of Laxmichap under Nilphamari sadar are over the moon unlike the time in the past when Monga (seasonal and localised famine) cast the long dark shadows of suffering with wholesale unemployment and mass exodus to towns turning the village into a bleak landscape.
Gone are the days when Monga (seasonal and localised famine) used to stalk the landless farm labourers and marginal farmers of five northern districts during the lean period of October-November each year. Thanks to modern rice science that has bred short-duration varieties like BRRI dhan-33 and BINA dhan-7 much to the relief of over 37 lakh hard-hit poor, who have now started saying goodbye to Monga.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith on Monday called for establishing the Saarc Food Bank to meet the growing challenge of food security in the South Asian region. He was speaking as chief guest at the Saarc finance governors' symposium on food security at Dhaka Sheraton Hotel in the capital in the morning.
Farmers in eight monga prone districts will be able to produce an additional 10 lakh tons of Aman paddy within a couple years by cultivating a new variety of paddy (BINA-7) developed by the Bangladesh Institute of Nuclear Agriculture (BINA).
The government will not withdraw and relax the ban on export of rice, particularly the fine grade, in consideration of the political sensitivity involved in the price of the main food grain. Commerce ministry sources said the ministry at a meeting with a group of rice traders on Monday rejected their plea for revising the ban on fine rice export.
Bangladesh needs to scale up measures to ensure people's access to safe (arsenic and pathogen free) drinking water to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in water supply and sanitation by 2015. With the support of the World Bank, the Government had undertaken the Bangladesh Water Supply Program Project (BWSPP) in 2004 to expand the provision of safe drinking water supply services in selected rural villages and small towns.
