There is a huge hue and cry about the recent unprecedented price hike of soybean oil. This is probably an issue that drew the media's attention the most. For the last couple of years, the price of soybean oil has been constantly on the rise due mainly to the volatile price in the international market.

Prices of soybean and palm oil have risen sharply in the last two years, and no wonder they topped the list. In 2020, the price of bottled soybean oil in the country was Tk 113 a litre, which now stands at Tk 198.

Palm oil price (loose) was Tk 78 per litre in 2020 and Tk 130 recently. Last week, the government fixed the price of loose palm oil at Tk 172 a litre, a rise of 72 per cent.

Questions have arisen what has caused the prices of edible oil to go up so sharply and so frequently?

Bangladesh imports 90 per cent of its annual demand for edible oil. The major supplying countries of soybean oil are Brazil and Argentina and Malaysia and Indonesia are the two-biggest supplying countries of palm oil.

According to a study by the International Food Policy Research Institute, the price increase is mainly due to global weather events that have taken a toll on the supplies of two key oil commodities.

Over the last six months, there's been a drought in Argentina and Brazil. Malaysia got badly hit by a devastating typhoon and had flooding. This had a big impact on its palm oil production this year.

Brazil accounts for about half of global soybean exports, while Indonesia and Malaysia produce much of the world's palm oil. The Ukraine-Russia war aggravated the situation as supplies of sunflower oil have been cut off from these two countries, the two biggest suppliers of sunflower oil, causing soybean and palm oil prices to go up further.

According to the Index Mundi, the price of soybean oil in the world market was $1,411 per tonne last December. Recently, the price has gone up to $1,900 per tonne.

The price of palm oil was $1,142 a tonne in December 2021 which had reached nearly $1,700 last month. All forecasts suggest that this volatility in the edible oil price is going to stay for a longer period.

What should Bangladesh do in the backdrop of such uncertainty? The answer lies in our history and surprisingly enough, we can easily be turning Bangladesh into a self-dependent country in edible oil production.

Wondering how? In the good old days, even during the 1970s, mustard oil used to be the main cooking oil here. Since the late 1970s, soybean and palm oil slowly started to take the place of mustard oil. 

The total annual demand for edible oil and fat is around 3 million tonnes in Bangladesh. We imported 2.73 million tonnes of oils and fat in 2020, out of which palm oil import was 1.33 million tonnes and soybean oil were 0.80 million tonnes.

We also imported soybean seeds from which 0.41 million tonnes of oil were extracted locally. There were roughly 0.18 million tonnes of other types of edible oil like canola and sunflower, which were also imported.

We produced around 250,000 tonnes of indigenous oils locally. Bangladesh had to spend more than $2 billion to import edible oil and fat. That's huge, right?

Presently, we cultivate mustard on 0.60 million hectares of land from which we produce about 0.78 million tonnes of mustard. Nearly 300,000 tonnes of oil are extracted from this quantity of seeds.

As a first step, we need to bring more land under mustard cultivation. There are nearly 2.20 million hectares of land which remain unutilised between Aman harvest and Boro cultivating time. This land can easily be brought under mustard cultivation, which is rather easy to cultivate, less costly and can be harvested in just 80 days.

We need to promote the high-yielding variety of Bina-04 and Bina-09 to maximise production. The average productivity of these two varieties is 1.60 tonnes per hectare. If we can bring 3 million hectares of land under mustard cultivation in the next five years, this will give us 4.80 million tonnes of mustard production from which we can extract 1.90 million tonnes of oil.

Gradually, in the next seven years, we need to bring around 4.75 million hectares of land under mustard cultivation to produce 3 million tonnes of oil to meet our demand.

There is a misconception among consumers that soybean oil is better than mustard oil in terms of health and nutritional benefits. This is not true at all. Mustard oil has more thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, vitamin B6 and folate than soybean oil. It has significantly more iron, potassium, calcium, and dietary fibre.

Mustard oil has the lowest saturated fat content among edible oils. This oil comprises 12 per cent Omega-3 (Alpha-Linolenic Fatty Acid) compared to Olive oil (only 0.6 per cent).

According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, mustard oil reduces heart attacks by nearly 70 per cent.

In a nutshell, the key action points are: bringing more land under mustard cultivation; introducing high-yielding mustard varieties; promoting short-duration rice varieties in Aman to have a sufficient time for mustard cultivation; launching a comprehensive campaign to educate the consumers about the health benefits of mustard oil; and intensifying research activities to improve the quality of mustard seeds. 

The agriculture ministry took a project to increase the production of oilseeds in 2017. The time has come to consider this initiative as one of the top priorities of our overall agriculture strategy.

By maximising mustard oil production, not only we will be able to save billions of valued foreign currencies, we will also be able to build a healthier nation.     

The author is chairman and managing director of BASF Bangladesh Ltd. Views are personal.