Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina directed the authorities concerned not to take any development project on arable land where crops grow three times in a year. The premier came up with the directives at the cabinet meeting held at Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in the capital Dhaka on Tuesday.
Different ministries and departments submitted proposals for construction of development projects, including installation of solar panels and building construction on arable land.
Approximately 80,000 hectares of arable land disappears from the country every year. All these lands are going into the hands of non agriculture sector like housing, industrialisation and other purposes under the very nose of the authorities concerned.
By filling croplands, residential dwellings, roads, various infrastructures like high rise buildings, factories, industries, hotels, resorts and other business establishments are being built indiscriminately across the country. Besides, brick kilns are also destroying the arable lands in many ways alongside polluting the environment.
If this unhealthy trend is not stopped
immediately, the country will face serious
difficulties in ensuring food security for
its growing population
in the future
According to the ministry of environment, forest and climate change, the amount of cultivable land in the country in 1982-1983 was 9.15 million hectares. In 2017-18 the amount of cultivable land stood at 8.02 million hectares.
A total of one million hectares of arable land was lost in the last 45 years, says a study. Of them, many lands were triple-cropped ones.
If this unhealthy trend is not stopped immediately, the country will face serious difficulties in ensuring food security for its growing population in the future.
Bangladesh is progressing ahead and soon it will be a middle income country.
The country must have enough land to produce its own food. Hence, the government must pay attention to protecting farmland for the development of sustainable agriculture.
All concerned must be more conscious as the country’s crop productivity will come down drastically due to continuous declining of arable land. To this end, the government will have to undertake a combined planning on agriculture by annexing urban agriculture with the mainstream agriculture so that the country can face the future challenges.