Farmers to be unhappy

Din Mohammad Alam, a farmer in Natore, could not be happy when he watched Finance Minister AMA Muhith speaking on agriculture budget yesterday afternoon.
“The minister has not announced any plan… how we can get fair prices of our products,” he said but appreciated continuing the subsidies on farm inputs.
 The 2014-15 budget proposed Tk 12,390 allocation for agriculture, which is 0.73 percent less than that of current fiscal year. It has proposed Tk 9,000 crore as subsidy just the same as current year, but not specified where it would be used.
“Subsidies are used mainly in fertilisers, but prices of other items -- labour, water, insecticides, seeds -- are quite high. But, when we take our produces to the marketplace, we get frustrated,” he said.
 Muhith boasted that the government completed the process of developing 1414 growth centres to revamp rural economy and established 484 cooperative markets for farmers to directly sell produces at fair prices.
“It is the goons and the landlords who take control of these bazars, not the common farmers,” said Alam, voicing concerns of most of the country's small and medium farmers.
Rezaul Karim Siddique, an agriculture development analyst, said the Awami League-led government had focused on increasing productivity of farm sector since the start of its previous tenure in 2009.
However, the success appears to be dim when it comes to the interest of the farmers, who feed the nation.
Siddique, also adviser to the Centre for Agribusiness and Competitive Strategies, said farmers faced so much of troubles in marketing vegetables, especially potato, last winter due to political turmoil.
“The authorities provided special security to the readymade garment industry for shipment, but nothing for the poor farmers,” he observed.
Not only vegetables, farmers almost regularly get low prices in jute and paddy, which are major farm produces in the country.
Though the government regularly provided price incentives under food grain procurement systems, it is basically the millers or traders who benefit most out of it.
Dr Quazi Shahabuddin, former director general of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, suggested that more storage facilities and better transport system in the remote areas be introduced for efficient marketing of farm produces that can help farmers get fair prices.
Rezaul Karim Siddique believes while researches on increasing farm productivity must continue, especially as climate change poses threats to agriculture production, it is time the authorities went for vigorous researches on reducing post-harvest wastage of crop, which is now 10 to 15 percent. In case of vegetables, wastage is up to 50 percent, he noted.
Din Mohammad Alam, who is a leader of Boraigram Development Society, suggests that the government establish a price commission, which would fix prices of different produces on the basis of total production cost and declare it well ahead of time.
“Then we can plan accordingly and go for production,” the farmer observed.