Agricultural Policy of Bangladesh Essay

gardening is the dominant economic activity in Bangladesh and regarded as the lifeline of the Bangladesh economy. Its role is vital in enhancing productivity, profitability and employment in the folksy beas for improving the wellbeing of the poor. As the largest private enterprise, agribusiness ( domesticates, livestock, fisheries and forestry) contributes rough 21% of the GDP, sustains the livelihood of about 52% of the labour force, and remains a major supplier of raw materials for agro-based industries.Agriculture plays an important role in the overall economic development of Bangladesh. Agriculture is also a complaisant sector concerned with issues like food and nutritional security, income generation and mendicancy reduction. Besides, it is the biggest source of market for a variety of consumer goods, including consumer durables particularly in the rural area. Hence, improvement in country sector performance and speedup in its subjoin are critical to reducing rural wan t. 1. 2Agricuture sector encompasses crops, fisheries, livestock, and forestry sub-sectors. Separate policies on livestock, fisheries and forestry have been formulated by the respective(prenominal) ministries. In this perspective, Ministry of Agriculture has drafted this policy scroll in ensnare to abbreviate and guide development activities in the crops sub-sector. As expected, policies aimed at crop take in the areas of reaserch, extension, seeds, fertilisers, minor irrigation, marketing, gender and HRD have prominence in this document.Since crop sector plays a major role in Bangladesh agriculture and gets the farthermost importance in various agriculture related programmes of the government, this policy document for the development of crop sector is, therefore, entitled as the National Agriculture Policy. It is estimated that the agricultural land is declining by 1% per year and the land tincture is deteriorating owing to degradation of soil fertility (e. g. nutrient imbala nce), soil eating a port and soil salinity.In addition, water resources are also shrinking. In order to produce more food for an increasing population, and raw materials for agro-industries, there is a need for increasing agricultural increase by dint of high productivity, including change magnitude yield, agricultural intensification and variegation, and value addition. The overarching goal of the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) matches with Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of achieving 50% reduction in the proportion of population living below the poverty by 2015.In addition to maintaining a sound macro-economic framework, the Poverty diminution Strategy Paper (PRSP), entitled Unlocking the Potential National Strategy for deepen Poverty Reduction (GoB, 2005), highlights the need for higher growth in rural areas, development of agriculture and rural non-farm economic activities as one of the quadruplet priority areas to accelerating pro-poor economic growth. In order to ach ieve the GDP growth rate of 7% per year, agriculture must grow by at least 4-4. 5% per year (PRSP, 2005).This is presumably possible through an increase in agricultural productivity (for crops, horticulture, livestock, fisheries and forestry) based on modern agricultural technology and a supply chain linking farmers with consumers in the domestic as well as overseas markets. Small farms dominate the agrarian social form of Bangladesh. Therefore, performance of the sector greatly affects economic progress and people s livelihood. To rationalize rural poverty 2 and improve rural livelihoods, it is indispensable to recognize and to develop existing agricultural production system into a more dynamic and viable commercial sector.Agriculture has the potential to reduce food deficit as well as shortage of industrial raw materials, and also to generate employment opportunities with reasonable income, which will in turn help improve the standard of living of the rural people. The growth potential of most of the crops and other agricultural commodities are substantially higher than present level of production. 1. 7 Sustainable intensification and diversification of agriculture through technological change requires an efficient and productive agricultural technology system comprising agricultural research and extension.This needs to be supported by allow value addition and market linkages. Enhancing productivity, resource use efficiency, using shimmy age science, experimental facilities and above all productivity and maintaining a reference of first-rate human resources to sustain knowledge-intensive agriculture has become critically important. The Bangladesh agriculture demands considerable scientific and technological input. Today s complex field of study and economic environment requires increase in the effectiveness of the public expending in research and extension system.Major challenges for the Bangladesh agriculture are to peak productivity and profitabi lity, reducing instability, increasing resource-use efficiency, ensuring equity, improving quality and meeting demands for diversification & commercialization of agriculture. 1. 9 The existing National Agricultural Policy was adopt in April, 1999. With the passage of time some issues and concerns have emerged in agriculture, in some cases with new dimension. For instance, dwindling agricultural resources, declining biodiversity, climate change, increasing frequency & intensity of natural disasters, increasing input prices, soaring food prices etceterarequire transformation of agriculture in such a way that would address challenges to meet demands. This necessitates the revision and updating the earlier document to nock it relevant to the present agro-economic context. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) of Agriculture Sector For developing of a pragmatic and effective and efficient national agricultural policy, it is a pre-requisite to gauge the Strengths, Wea knesses, Opportunities and Threats that are associated with the issues of policy interventions.