Land production fell by 0.44% between 2011 and 2020: BIDS

Bangladesh’s land productivity declined by 0.44 percent between 2011 and 2020, likely due to land degradation, reduced fertility and unsustainable agricultural practices, according to a study by the Bangladesh Institute of Agriculture. Development Studies (BIDS).

Land productivity increased by 2.75 percent between 1991 and 2000 and the upward trend continued, increasing by 3.30 percent in 2010.

However, it followed a downward trend from the following year, with a decline of 0.44% in 2020, according to the study.

The study, titled “Agricultural Productivity and Technical Efficiency in Bangladesh”, was presented yesterday on the last day of an annual BIDS development conference at the Lakeshore Hotel in Dhaka.

Land productivity measures production per unit of land, for example per hectare, reflecting the efficiency of land use in the production process.

BIDS Research Director Mohammad Yunus, Professor MA Sattar Mandal, Researcher Azreen Karim and Research Associate Rizwana Islam conducted the study. Taznoore Samina Khanam, BIDS researcher, presented the study.

Land productivity measures production per unit of land, for example per hectare, reflecting the efficiency of land use in the production process, Khanam explained.

She said Bangladesh made some of the fastest gains in agricultural land productivity during 2001-2010.

To conduct a micro-level analysis, the study used data from three rounds of the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS), implemented by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

It used secondary data from Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for macro-level analysis.

Referring to the 2019 agricultural census data on the area of ​​cultivated land, Khanam said it showed that there had been a significant decline in the net cultivated area per holding.

It increased from 0.28 hectares in 2008 to 0.21 hectares in 2019, she added.

“This change therefore has significant implications for agricultural productivity,” she said.

The researchers also analyzed total factor productivity (TFP) growth.

The TFP compares all agricultural products – such as crops, livestock and aquaculture products – with the combined inputs of land, labor, capital and intermediate resources used to produce them.

The TFP trend shows an increase from 2000 to 2011, followed by stagnation from 2011 to 2017, and then a downward trend from 2018 to 2021, Khanam said.

The level of agricultural production in 2021 was 196 percent higher than in 1990, with an average annual growth of 6.32 percent. During the period 1990-2021, total input use increased by 4.66% per year, according to the study.

A notable increase in inputs was observed during the period 2016-2021, at a rate of 4.27% per year on average, driven by growth in wage labor and material inputs.

Average annual TFP growth increased from a negative 1.16 percent during 2016-2021 to 0.54 percent during 2019-2021, enabling growth of 2021 agricultural production to return to a positive level after a slowdown in previous years, according to the report.

In an analysis of the cost of paddy production, the study showed an increase of 3.45 percent between 2012 and 2018.

“This reflects rising costs of production inputs,” he said.

Although producer prices also increased, they increased at a slower pace, by only 1.31 percent during the same period.

The decreasing ratio between the gross value of production and the total cost of production inputs implies that the profitability of rice farming declines over time, the report said.

“Farmers receive less return on investment because costs rise faster than the prices they receive for their products. This trend highlights a growing economic challenge for rice farmers,” he adds.