Production hits record 42m tonnes in FY24, no import needed

TDS DESK:

A bumper Boro harvest has propelled Bangladesh to record rice production in this fiscal year just concluded.

Thanks to favourable weather conditions and increased cultivation of high-yielding hybrid varieties, the country has registered almost a 3-million-tonne surge in rice production in fiscal 2023-24 when compared to the previous year.

Total rice production in the country hit a record 42.04 million tonnes in FY24, up by 2.939 million tonnes from 39.10 million tonnes produced in the previous fiscal, according to the Department of Agriculture Extension.

The country’s estimated yearly rice production growth in FY24 hit 7.51%. However, the actual growth will be measured soon after the statistics released by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), said Dr Jahangir Alam Khan, an agro-economist and researcher.

“There should be no shortage of rice as the country witnessed a record production last fiscal year. It will reduce the country’s import dependency and save foreign exchange,” he said.

He, however, said the population of Bangladesh has been increasing by 1.3% per year so the demand for rice is also increasing.

“In the last three consecutive years (2021, 2022, 2023) average growth rate of rice production was 0.52% per year, which was not in par with the increasing rate of population. However, that situation improved in FY24,” he said.

He said the annual demand for rice is around 36-37 million tonnes. Of these, 30 million tonnes of rice is needed for human consumption and 6-7 million tonnes for non-consumption uses like seed, feed, wastage, and processing.

Farmers had a good Boro harvest in the outgoing season, which helped to produce a record amount of rice in the country.

Rice is produced in three seasons in the country, and Boro is the biggest season among them.Paddy is cultivated during December and January and harvested in April and May. Aush is cultivated after Boro, and Aman is cultivated during the monsoon.

The government data showed that the country did not need to import rice in the just concluded fiscal due to the surplus domestic production.

The country imported 1.055 million tonnes of rice in FY23, according to the Ministry of Food.

According to the Ministry of Food, the government had 1.06 million tonnes of rice in stock as of 30 June 2024.

Wahida Akter, secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, said, “The country achieved a good harvest in Boro season this year, defying the flash flood and cyclone Remal, which helped us to increase the total production of rice.

“Our production of rice is higher than the demand, so there is no crisis of rice.”

The ministry has taken a plan to achieve the rice production target despite many adverse weather conditions, said the secretary.

Earlier, the Food Outlook June 2024 of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) forecasted that Bangladesh may see a 1.2% increase in rice production in 2024/25 compared to the previous year.

Within the region, Bangladesh, India, and the Philippines are all seen gathering record crops on the back of improved growing conditions and strong government support, it said.

Rice production has increased by three times since the liberation of Bangladesh.

In their list of rice producers, Bangladesh secured the third place for the seventh consecutive year, while India was second and China was first.

Bangladesh was fourth in rice production in 2018 with Indonesia being third, India second and China first. Bangladesh produced 36.5 million tonnes of rice in 2019 and ranked third in the world for the first time that year.