Agricultural lands are decreasing in the district as they are being used for other purposes, threatening agriculture.

Agricultural land is being transformed into ponds, fishing enclosures, forests, and gardens, as farmers are getting more profit from fish and vegetable farming and wood selling than cultivation of traditional crops, said several farmers of Bagri in Rajapur upazila.   

Most of the farmers in the district are landless and work on other people's land or lease land for farming, so they have nothing to say when a piece of land is converted for another use by its owner, said District Department of Agriculture Extension Deputy Director Sheikh Abu Bakar Siddik.

There are 15,942 landless farmers and 48,223 farmers having very small areas of land, out of 1,03,460 famers for 54,000 hectares of cultivable land in the district, he added.

About two percent of agricultural land in the district is being lost every year, according to the district agricultural office.

Most of the land owners are interested in converting their land into timber forest so that they can sell the trees after 20 to 30 years, said many farmers.

“I used to grow paddy on five acres of land four to five years ago, but now it is only one acre because the rest is being prepared for making a forest,” said Hemayet, a landless farmer of Bhatkathi village in Rajapur.

 “We have very limited land, so we should give most emphasis on saving the land from any conversion to save our agriculture,” said Rajapur Upazila Agriculture Extension Officer Tilok Ghosh, adding that if the land changing continues, agricultural production will face a great crisis.

“I am shocked to see the land conversion, but people do not understand the worst consequence of it,” he added.

“We are using our paddy lands for other purposes as the culitvation does not bring profit. I am going to plant trees on the paddy field for more profit," said Maharaj, a farmer of Indrapasha.

“Transformation of land and planting of timber trees is a great threat for agriculture, food safety and the land itself,” said Md Jamal Uddin, chairman of the Department of Soil and Environment Science of Barisal University. 

“There is a land policy that no one can convert agricultural land, but no one follows it. The existing law is hardly implemented across the country, though some projects have been taken to save the lands from such conversion,” said Md Hamidul Haque, deputy commissioner of Jhalakathi.  

If anyone wants to change his land from agriculture to forest or housing, he must take permission from the assistant commissioner of land, he added.