Bangladesh: Agricultural growth benefits still elusive for farmers, consumers

In five the past decades after independence, Bangladesh has significantly increased its food production but the benefits from the success remain elusive to farmers and consumers, economists and agriculturists said.Farmers are still denied a legitimate price of their products because of an inefficient supply chain, which leads to the reduction of roughly a fourth of many of their products including vegetables, fruits and condiments to waste, they said.The consumers, especially the urban poor, continue to remain hostage to hoarders routinely manipulating the prices of agricultural products such as rice and potato thanks to the absence of a mechanism for their proper storage and distribution, they said.Agriculturists said that the rush to increase agricultural production without considering environmental and health consequences from the unabated application of agrochemicals and, additionally, the introduction of hybrid and alien varieties has taken its toll as well.Many native ...