Agriculture and Livestock

The availability, access, and consumption of nutritious food is extremely important. Despite declining arable agricultural land, Bangladesh has made substantial progress in boosting domestic food production, improving access to food by increasing household income, and enhancing nutritional outcomes. Nevertheless, the challenges to food and nutrition security remain formidable.

Agriculture was once the basis of the socio-economic structure of Bangladesh, but in the last forty years the rain-fed agricultural subsystem has undergone transformation. In recent decades, irrigation and the introduction of High Yielding Variety (HYV) rice has worked to make Boro the highest-producing rice season – transforming Bangladesh from the “basket case” of the seventies into an economy that is self-sufficient in food.

Bangladesh is one of the least developed countries in the World. The great majority  of  its people depend on agriculture for earning their living. Despite planned efforts by the government to increase agricultural productivity for more than three decades, the growth and output in this sector has not kept pace with the growth of population. This is a matter of great concern for the people as well as the policy makers of the country.

Rice is the staple food crop of Bangladesh. During the last four decades rice production has been transformed from a low input, traditional system to an intensive, high- yielding system relying on high inputs which has strongly influenced the incidence and abundance of rice pests. At the same time and during the same period, great strides were made in our understanding of the ecology of pests and therefore their management. We moved from a dependence on pesticides to an ecological approach based on the principles of integrated pest management (IPM).