Budgetary allocation for agriculture should be raised up to the level of its contribution to the gross domestic product; otherwise, agricultural output would face a setback in near future, agriculturists and economists warn.
  
Since the sector gives livelihood to about 62 per cent of the total population, it needs higher investment if the government wants to reduce poverty and unemployment, they say.
  
They suggest that the government should earmark 33 per cent or one-third of the total development budget outlay for the sector, covering crop, livestock, forestry and fisheries, along with water management and rural development.
  
Currently, the sector gets around 10 per cent of the total allocation.
  
Statistics show that during the post-independence period, the agriculture allocation was 31 per cent, which dropped to less than one-tenth of public spending with subsidies and incentives gradually disappearing.
  
Latest increases in agricultural allocation and subsidy are quite inadequate given the trend of prices of farm inputs, especially imported fertilisers.
  
The total subsidy stands less than one per cent of the total agricultural output, which agricultural economists feel, could be increased to 10 per cent.
  
Until late 1970s, farm subsidies accounted for as much as 50 per cent of the farm output, which came down to 2.5 per cent and even much less than 1 per cent at the end of the 1990s.
  
Farm subsidies average 35 per cent of the total agricultural output in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, while they are 69 per cent in Japan and 20 per cent in Canada.
 
Dr Mohammed Jahangir Alam, a former member director (livestock) of the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Council, told New Age on May 31 that the agriculture allocation has fallen drastically over the years.
  
The sector should be given the highest priority as the country is losing nearly 235 hectares of arable land every day for increased land usage for commercial, industrial and other purposes. The situation calls for a more focussed plans and investment in the sector, he said.
  
‘If the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty by 2015 is to be achieved, the government will have to give more emphasis on both food and non-food farm sectors,’ Jahangir Alam said.
 
He suggested that the government should increase the production of certified seed in the public sector at least to 20 per cent of the total seed requirement to ensure supply of quality seed to farmers.
  
Quality seed produced by the government agency Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation now accounts for only 5 to 6 per cent of the total need and the government is considering raise it up to 10 per cent.
  
Regarding the irrigation costs, Jahangir Alam said the government has to provide fuel to farmers at subsidised rates while farmers need to minimise irrigation cost, which is much higher than in the neighbouring countries and need to be reduced.
  
The government needs to put emphasis first on food crops and then on diversification of non-food crops like vegetable, oil seeds, pulses and fruits.
  
Secondly, attention should be given on the export-oriented crop as well as on non-crop sectors like livestock, forestry and fisheries to give a boost to the backward and forward linkage industries in the sector. These linkage industries could create huge employment and enhance wage rate thus contributing a lot to poverty reduction.
  
The research activities on diversification of the crop sector and extension services should be emphasised as the country has advanced remarkably in research on rice, wheat, potato and other agricultural crop production. But the applications of the results of these researches have not been encouraging yet at the field level.
  
The agricultural diversification cannot be possible unless the government gives emphasis on agricultural research, which now gets an allocation of only 0.2 per cent of the GDP.
  
Research budget should be at least one per cent of the agricultural GDP as the country depends largely on imports to meet the deficit of spices, oil seeds and fruits.
  
Moreover, the government needs to invest more in reorganising the agricultural marketing system and strengthening the marketing research and intelligence wing to enhance the country’s competitiveness to sustain the free trade regime.
  
For the development of agro-processing industry and agricultural export, the government has to continue cash incentives, experts said.
  
At the same time, they suggested that the government should put a mechanism in place to make sure that the subsidies reach the farmers directly.