Both farmers and consumers will lose, only middlemen will gain
Farmers throughout the country criticised the recent government decision to import rice from the international market rather than procuring Aman paddy from local farmers, arguing that not only will they incur losses but that the consumers will also not gain.
Food minister Abdur Razzaque, after a meeting of the Food Policy and Monitoring Unit, announced on November 22 that the government had decided to import rice. He said that the government would neither procure rice this Aman season from the local market, nor fix its price.
He said that the government now has a stock of around 8 lakh tonnes of rice and wheat, and intends to import a further 8 lakh tonnes by the end of December from India and Vietnam.
He tried to justify this decision by claiming that this would bring down the prices of rice.
But farmers argue that traders and middlemen will not pass on the low prices at which they will buy the rice from the farmers to consumers.
Most farmers told New Age said that they had got a bumper crop of T-Aman this year, and will need to sell a part of it to get money after the harvest for living expenses.
‘The production of T-Aman paddy has increased on my land, but the government’s decision not to buy paddy may decrease the price,’ said Bikash Kumar Dutta, a farmer of Raruli village under Paikgachha upazila in Khulna district.
Another farmer, MA Quddus, from Ajimpur village under Birol upazila in Dinajpur district, said, ‘If the government does not buy Aman paddy this year, the traders will buy it at a lower rate to store in their godowns.’
He said that the government’s decision will harm the farmers and benefit the traders and middlemen.
The view of individual farmers is supported by the Bangladesh Krishak Samiti.
Its president, Morshed Ali, told New Age, ‘The price that the traders will pay for the rice will fall as the government is forcing the farmers into a buyers’ market.’
He explained that the farmers will not know at what price to sell their rice and the middlemen will therefore be able to set low prices.
He also thinks that the consumers will not gain as the traders will store the rice until the prices in the market rise. ‘The sufferings of the consumers will continue,’ he predicted.
The president of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh, Quazi Faruque, also criticised the government’s decision, expressing doubts about the quality of the rice that will be imported.
This decision, which has been made at a time when Bangladesh is going to have a bumper harvest, seems to be totally groundless, he added.
The field service wing director of the Agriculture Extension Department, Md Habibur Rahman, said, ‘Though right now it is not possible to say what will be the total T-Aman production throughout the country as the harvesting will begin in mid-November and will continue till January, the production will exceed the target as we have been receiving news of bumper production in several districts.’
AED officials told New Age that rice had been planted on almost 1 lakh hectares more of land than the target — 55.369 lakh hectares compared to the target of 54.5 lakh hectares.
They said that though they had not set a target for cultivating hybrid T-Aman, it had been cultivated in 0.133 lakh hectares across the country.
The officials said that they had set a target of producing 130.36 lakh tonnes of T-Aman by January, including 111.61 lakh tonnes of high yielding varieties and 18.75 lakh tonnes of local T-Aman.
The harvest, however, has not been good in some parts of the country. The harvest in Jhenaidah is likely to be less than in the previous years. The deputy director of the DAE in that district, Mahbub Ur Rahman, said that the harvest might decrease by 2.5 to 3 per cent compared to the previous year due to the low level of rainfall.
Ananda Mohan, of Ashurhat village in Shailkupa upazila in Jhenaidah district, told New Age, ‘I harvested 104 maunds of paddy last year from my 200 decimals of land, but I got only around 100 maunds this year.’
Abdul Hai, a farmer of Shastibar village under Shailkupa upazila, who has cultivated T-Aman in about 13 acres of land, said that he would incur financial loss, as the result of a poor harvest, if the government does not buy Aman paddy from him.
