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Bangladesh has made notable progress in achieving food security, despite extreme population pressures, limited land resources, and an agrarian structure dominated by small and tenant farmers. After two decades of sluggish performance prior to the late 1980s, the production of rice—the dominant staple food—has increased much faster than the population. The development of minor irrigation, particularly private, investment-based expansion of shallow tubewells, has contributed to this impressive performance, and was an outcome of the government's market liberalization policy for irrigation equipment in the late 1980s. This policy promoted rapid expansion of irrigated "boro" rice farming in the dry season. The fast diffusion of boro rice in the rain-fed, low-yielding "aus" rice area contributed to accelerated growth in rice productivity, a reduction in the unit cost of production, and a decline in real rice prices. Together, these factors have been a major factor behind attainment of food security and moderately reduced poverty in Bangladesh over the last two decades. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; GRP4; DCA; 2020 ; DGO

Floods and droughts are common phenomena in Bangladesh. Some parts of the country are affected by natural calamities almost every year. The author assesses the impact of natural disasters on foodgrain production at the national and regional levels during the 1973-1990 period. He also evaluates the public policy response to natural disasters. (DÜI-Sen)

The benefits of agricultural growth, from land-based development programmes in general, are unevenly distributed, tending to bypass the marginal farmers and the landless. In theory, the indirect benefits from growth, operating through various expenditure-inducted linkages, could, to some extent, counter this trend towards greater inequality. Given the importance of the linkages recognized in the literature, and the experience of moderate agricultural growth in the country, the paper tries to assess the extent of such linkages in Bangladesh by analysing the pattern of consumption expenditure and the investment behaviour of different groups of rural households. (DÜI-Sen)

Major characteristics of rural industrial enterprises and products with regard to employment generation, and of workers employed in rural industries - their background, the nature of their involvement etc. are described. The paper concludes that the potential for employment generation through rural industrialisation in Bangladesh is high since a significant proportion of rural workers are already employed in this sector. (DÜI-Sen)

The article explores the role of irrigation in agricultural development in Bangladesh by quantifying the relationship of fertilizer consumption and adoption of high-yielding varieties with irrigation, and estimating the effect of irrigation on the intensity of land use and the growth of crop output and productivity. The results show a strong relationship between irrigation and the growth of crop output. (DÜI-Sen)

In 1977, a national level survey on land occupancy in Bangladesh was carried out by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and the USAID, and was followed up two more surveys in 1978 and 1979. The author shows the extent of landlessness and the pattern of distribution of landownership from the findings of these surveys. He briefly reports also on the 1982 pilot agricultural census. (DÜI-Sen)

Based on data collected through two household surveys carried out during 1977/78 and 1983/84 in two villages of Bangladesh, the paper looks at the growth of fertilizer consumption. All categories of farms experienced rapid growth but performance of the small farms is better in terms of use per acre of cropped land. (DÜI-Sen)

The input-output structure of rural industries show that they provide important backward and foreward linkage to other activities both in urban and rural areas. The labour productivity is generally found to be low, particularly for the cottage industries which employ women in large proportion. In a large number of cottage industries, the family income and profits are found to be low. (DÜI-Sen)

The long term (1949-84) growth of Bangladesh agriculture and factors contributing to it are analysed. It is shown that the decline in per capita agricultural production is mainly due to stagnation during the late fifties and the early seventies, caused by natural factors and disruptions owing to the war of liberation. Production grew much faster than population during the sixties and the post-1975/76 period. (DÜI-Sen)

After reviewing the trend of prices, fertilizer consumption and the development of non-price factors which might influence fertilizer use in Bangladesh, this contribution attempts to quantify the impact of prices on fertilizer consumption by pooling available time series and cross-sectional data for recent years. The importance of various non-price factors in determining fertilizer consumption in the country is assessed. (DÜI-Sen)