If country self-sufficient in food, why are imports so high?

It has long been touted that Bangladesh is self-sufficient in food. In fact, this is repeated time and again from almost all quarters of the government.

However, the reality is that Bangladesh had to import more than 10.5 million tonnes (10,533,000) of food grain in the last fiscal year. The amount of import may come down to 10.4 million tonnes (10,449,000) this fiscal year.

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) came up with this information in their food situation report of last September.

The country’s imports might reduce this time, but not because food grain production is going up. Rather it is predicted that import of all products including food will decrease for various reasons including the dollar crisis and price hike of all products including consumer items in the international market.

While explaining the pressure created on country's economy in importing food products, agriculture minister Abdur Razzaque shared some information in an event last Saturday.

He said, every year it requires about Tk 200 to 240 billion to import edible oil alone.

Apart from this, Bangladesh imports a huge amount of staple foods like milk powder, lentils, maize and wheat. Wheat has turned into our secondary staple food now. That too has to be imported up to about 7 to 7.5 million tonnes a year.

On this issue, the food ministry publishes the Food Situation Report which only accounts for rice and wheat.

The report includes information about the stock, prices, imports as well as government distribution of rice and wheat in the country.

The report provides the information about how much rice and wheat are stored on the government level.

From the information of country’s rice and wheat import in the past 12 years provided in the report citing Bangladesh Bank sources, there’s no way Bangladesh can be considered self-sufficient in rice and wheat.

Bangladesh has imported rice and wheat more or less each and every year.

Bangladesh Bank’s website contains detailed information on this. Bangladesh imported rice worth Tk 8.5 billion in the last 2021-22 fiscal year.

Meanwhile, the amount of wheat import was worth Tk 18.3 billion. The import list includes food products like milk powder, spices and lentils.

There’s not much discussion among the policymakers of the country including the ruling party leaders on this information of such a huge amount of food product import.

They are busy blowing their own trumpet about their 'success’, mentioning Bangladesh’s rank in producing crops or how much the country’s food production has increased since independence.

However, agriculture minister Abdur Razzaque lamented Bangladesh’s huge expenditure on importing food products at an event of Bangladesh Rice Research Institute last Saturday.

It was said during the event that the government has planned to increase the production of edible oil by 40 per cent in the next three years.

A plan of increasing the rice production by 3.2 million tonnes during the same period has been taken as well.

However, questions can be raised as to why the government thought of these schemes only after the onset of a global food crisis. Food import in the country increased steadily in the past 12 years.

Why are experts coming up with theories that food, being imported in exchange of a large amount of foreign currency, can be produced inside the country, after so long!

If an initiative to increase production of the foods which are being consumed more in the country had been taken even 10 years ago, the situation would have been different now.

On the contrary, we see a huge amount of agricultural produce being wasted in the country every year due to lack of preservation.

Quite a few agricultural products are grown in the country in abundance compared to the demand. But those cannot be sold in the markets abroad.

Take potato for instance. Currently, about 10 million tonnes of potatoes are annually produced in the country. Two to three million tonnes of this is wasted due to the lack of preservation.

The type and variety of potatoes produced in Bangladesh is less in demand in the foreign market. So, they cannot be exported.

Then again, the government came to its senses only after India stopped exporting onion. Now it is said that the country will be self-sufficient in onions within the next three to four years.

From observing the situation closely, it seems behind the big talk of economic development, growing per capita income, skyrocketing reserves and achieving self-sufficiency in food, only a little amount of attention was paid on the actual work.

That’s why the concerned government departments are bringing forward the plan of increasing the production of essential food items at a time of acute crisis.

These plans on the other hand include different sorts of unnecessary expenditure, which has repeatedly come up in the reports of government’s audit department as well as the parliamentary standing committees.

It was necessary to take initiatives of reducing purchase of food products from the global market, long ago.

Plus, it was essential to focus on increasing the production of these food products inside the country. The reality can never be shielded with vague words.

So let the policy makers including the agriculture, fisheries and food related agencies of the government come to their senses on this issue. Everyone’s welfare lies there.