Boon for a few, bane for the vast many

It is disheartening to see how topsoil extraction continues unabated despite the threat it poses to the fertility of croplands and agricultural production. According to a recent report, like in many other parts of the country, the practice is rampant across 14 upazilas of Lalmonirhat and Kurigram districts, where about 180 brick kilns are involved in removing significant quantities of topsoil annually. The manner in which this is being done—openly and without any intervention from the authorities—makes one wonder about the government's sincerity to stop this nuisance or mitigate its adverse effects.

Topsoil, as the name implies, is the very top layer of soil that is dense with organic matter and minerals that plants need to grow. Thus, it is essential to ensure the fertility of lands. To allow it to be used in brick production instead may support the ongoing drive for development, but it hardly compensates for the loss of organic richness so essential for our long-term food security. And at a time when the health of over 76 percent of Bangladesh's soil has already deteriorated—with an average of 27,000 hectares of land being degraded each year due to various factors—cultivating another layer of vulnerability through unchecked topsoil removal questions not just our approach to these concerns but also the country's deeply-flawed development policy.

The fact is, extracting topsoil only benefits a few, those behind the brick kiln industry. But it has been a bane for all others. Farmers, in particular, stand to lose the most: Brick kiln owners usually purchase and extract a few bighas of topsoil at once, leaving nearby agricultural lands elevated. The disparity makes farming and irrigation challenging for other farmers, forcing many to also sell their topsoil to maintain even land levels. The bigger worry, according to an upazila agriculture officer, is the long time it takes (about 20 years) to recover land fertility afterwards, affecting their agricultural yields and livelihoods.

Using agricultural or hill soil for manufacturing bricks is a punishable offence. Unfortunately, despite such regulations and having alternative, safer methods of production, a vast majority of brick kilns continue to remove topsoil. Experts have often suggested moving away from conventional bricks to environment-friendly "hollow blocks", which can eliminate the risk. It is high time the government properly enforced all regulations and long-overdue reforms to prevent the persistent onslaughts of brick kilns.