Bangladesh is blessed with favorable natural condones for the production of arranging crops all year round. In general, there is a greater variety of write corps than crops grown during the monsoon seasons. There are some major crops that play a vital role in the agriculture and economics of Bangladesh. Let’s discover the principal food crops grown in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh made significant progress in crop agriculture with food grains production almost doubling between 1969/70 to 1992/93. Foodgrains from the largest sub-sector in agriculture. Principal food crops grown in Bangladesh are discussed below:
Table of Contents
The principal food crops grown in Bangladesh are:
Rice is the dominant crop in Bangladesh, covering 75% of the cropped areas, and comprises 70% of the value of crop output. The three principal rice crops are:
Aman
Aman is planted in August and harvested in December. This is traditionally the main rice crop. It is still grown under rain-fed conditions making it vulnerable to drought and flood thereby risking crop losses.
Boro
Boro is planted in December and harvested in May/June. This crop has shown remarkable growth because of increased irrigation. It is leading agricultural development in Bangladesh and this crop clearly reveals the importance of technology in the form of High Yielding Varieties of seeds (HYV) which now account for over 90% of boro cultivation.
Aus
Aus is planted in April and harvested in July. This crop has slowly lost out to boro in terms of production.
Crops are grown seasonally depending on soil conditions. Crops cultivated during the monsoon season depend critically on the depth and nature of flooding. During the pre-monsoon and post-monsoon (rabi) seasons, the pattern is determined by:
- The internal drainage of the soil
- Availability of soil moisture
- Storage capacity for soil moisture
For example, Aus is primarily cultivated in high to medium highland (flooding depth not exceeding 90cm), while Aman needs flooding as high 180cm and is mainly grown in medium to lowland.
However, Boro is cultivated in very poorly drained soil with ample provision of irrigation and an absence of flooding before harvesting in May.
In Bangladesh, pulses consist of six major crops: lentil, khesari, black gram, mung bean, chickpea, and pigeon pea. These are very important, both as a source of protein supply in the diet as well as contributing nitrogen for soil nutrition. The cropped area under pulses has declined to owe to the greater emphasis on HYV rice and wheat in the last two decades.
Groundnuts, sunflowers, and soybean are cultivated for the production of vegetable oil. Vegetable oil is often the manicure of facts in the Bangladeshi diet and efforts are being made to increase the production of improved varieties of oil seeds.
Some Cash crops that grown in Bangladesh
Importance of cash crops and some of the constraints on their expansion
Introduction
The overwhelming share of food crops is produced for subsistence and any surplus is sold in the internal market. In recent years, Bangladesh has achieved near self-sufficiency in food.
A number of other crops are cultivated primarily for sale in the market and these have historically formed the core of the country’s export earnings. With the rise in exports in the garment sectors as a result of industrialization, the “historical” cash crops have lost their pre-eminence but they still contribute to overall agricultural growth.
The principal ash crops produced are:
- Jute
- Sugarcane
- Tea.
Jute
In spite of the relative decline of jute, it is still the main fiber crop in Bangladesh. Production of jute fiber reached a high of 8.66 million bales in 1985/86, but by 1992/93 it had declined to 4.92 million bales.
They share of raw jute and jute goods has been continuously declining as a share of total exports. The jute industry has also been declining over time because of low investment and declining world brackets.
However, farmers are being encouraged to intensify jute production through the provision of better quality seed and credit support. The output of jute is important not just for exports but also as a raw material for Bangladesh’s large domestic jute industry. About half the total jute crop is consumed by the dogmatic jute industry, whose profitability depends on the price of raw jute.
Sugarcane
Because it is an animal crop sugarcane keeps the land occupied throughout the year consequently some farmers are inclined to cultivate other profitable crops rather than sugarcane this results in a decline in crop acreage as well as the production of the commodity in recent years.
Tea
Tea is a labor-intensive export-oriented product in the agricultural sector it is both a source of export earnings as well as provides employment in labor-intensive plantations tea is grown on private sector plantations and processed for consumption in the domestic market and for export
| Crops | 1998/99 | 1999/2000 | 2000/01 |
| Wheat | 1,908 | 1,840 | 1,673 |
| Rice | 34,601 | 37,628 | 38,500 |
| Sugar cane | 6,951 | 6,910 | 6,742 |
| Lentils | 131 | 128 | 126 |
| Other pulses | 183 | 187 | 174 |
| Tea | 56 | 46 | 52 |
| Jute | 711 | 821 | 859 |
Table: Principal crops (000 metric tons, year ending 30 June)
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