Annual report 1998-1999

In a country so hungry that poor people steal rice from rat holes, food security is a serious threat. Rice research has been directly responsible for Bangladesh’s ability to feed itself.

Flood, drought, politics, and the resettlement of 10 million civil war refugees ignited the great famine of 1974, which caused massive human misery and starvation. The flood of 1998 was equally destructive, with the Bangladesh government reporting a loss of 2 million tons of rice worth $630 million.

But no famine followed the flood of 1998, thanks to political will and increased rice production--a direct result of research. One of the most important factors helping the country get through this crisis is the high-yielding irrigated dry-season (boro) crop. Boro rice has reduced the country’s dependence on its 40 percent deeply flooded land, which yields no rice in years of disastrous floods. With the innovations of groundwater tube wells for irrigation and modern high-yielding and shorter-duration boro rice varieties, farmers have been abandoning the risky low-yielding deepwater rice in favor of boro rice. This crop expanded from 0.9 million hectares in 1970 to 3.0 million in 1997.

Boro rice has made life better for many rural Bangladeshis. Muhammed Nizamuddin has been planting his 1-hectare farm in Manikganj District to modern boro varieties for years. "Boro rice costs more to grow, but there’s more food," says the farmer, who no longer has to buy rice to feed his family. Paresh Chandra Sarkar, a 50-year-old agricultural laborer, also says he is doing better with boro rice. "Now there’s more work."

The world’s most densely populated country, Bangladesh supports 128 million people. The average density is 900 persons per square kilometer. Despite a declining population growth rate (from 3 percent annually in 1965 to 1.7 percent today), the nation is still adding 2.2 million people each year. Per capita income is extremely low ($230 in 1994), with people spending nearly two-thirds of their income on food--35 percent on rice alone--and even more for the desperately poor.

Rice production has grown at an amazing 2.5 percent per year over 1976-94 on the same amount of cropped land (10 million hectares). This increase is almost exclusively because of the higher yields of modern varieties, which are grown on 60 percent of the land. This rice amounted to 9 million extra tons in 1993--enough to feed 40 million people.

Benefits from technological progress--modern varieties, irrigation, and the like--are estimated to be $300 million per year, 17 times more than the country’s total investment in rice research and technology transfer. With more efficient production has come a slight decline in rural poverty, and a drop in the rice price of 1.6 percent per year.

The future is tenuous, however, with Bangladeshi farmers needing to grow 2.5 percent more cereals each year if the country is to avoid additional imports. But there is no more land for expanding production, with nearly two-thirds of the nation’s total land mass of 14 million hectares already used to grow food--three-fourths of this area for rice alone.

Without technological progress, IRRI economist Mahabub Hossain estimates that rice production could never have outpaced population and would have grown at most by 1 percent per year. Unless supplemented by additional grain imports, the price would have increased, worsening food insecurity and poverty.

"If Bangladesh is to continue feeding its population and to increase its ability to cope with natural disaster, technological progress must continue in the future," Dr. Hossain says.

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