A review on Agricultural Division of Bangladesh

Introduction

 Bangladesh is predominantly an agricultural country where agriculture sector plays a vital role in accelerating the economic growth. In order to ensure food security and to reduce poverty, the committed target is to achieve self-sufficiency in food through increased crops production, sustainable growth of agriculture sector and employment opportunity as envisaged in National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction (NSAPR), National Agricultural Policy (NAP) and Millennium Develop Goals (MDGs). 

Govt. steps

For developing the agriculture sector, the government has taken a number of steps. These include, among others, expansion of small irrigation facilities, enhancing the production of domestic food grains, production of improved quality and high yielding expansion of the varieties of crops adaptable for the weather and environment of a particular region and producing crops suitable for a particular kind of land as well as proper use of fertilizer. In FY 2011-12, the food grains production was about 350.28 lac metric tons (MT) according to DAE estimation (Bangladesh economic review, 2012).

Fig: UNION-Domestic animal 

Contribution of agriculture sector

Livestock animals are the subsector of the agriculture industry. In Bangladesh, the industry generally combines with various animals like chicken, ducks, cattle, buffalo, goat and sheep and others. Livestock constitutes an integral part of the net economy of our country and it has the direct economic contribution on the total part of the GDP.

The contribution of agriculture sector in GDP stood at 20.01 percent in FY 2010-11(BBS, 2011-12). Regarding the provisional estimation of BBS, the overall contribution of the broad agriculture sector at a constant price was 19.29 percent of GDP in FY 2011-12. 

Within the broad agriculture sector in FY 2010-11, the contribution of agriculture and forestry and fisheries were at 15.52 percent and 4.43 percent respectively while the contribution of the three sub-sectors namely crops and vegetables, livestock and forestry were 11.24 percent, 2.57 percent, and 1.71 percent respectively. 

Though the direct contribution of agriculture sector has decreased slightly, its indirect contribution to the overall growth of GDP is significant. The growth of broad service sector, particularly the growth of wholesale and retail trade, hotel and restaurants, transport and communication sector was strongly supported by the agriculture sector. 

Besides, about 43.6 percent of the total labor forces of the country are engaged in the agriculture sector (MES, 2009). In FY 2011-12, Bangladesh earned US$ 282.86 million by exporting agricultural products which were 1.58 percent of total export earnings. In addition to the exports of main agricultural commodities such as raw jute, jute goods, tea, frozen foods, the Government has taken steps to increase exports of non-traditional agricultural commodities (BBS, 2012).

Veterinary industry

Veterinary industry plays a critical role in the expansion of agriculture industry in our country. Veterinary resources necessarily encompass animal health care and welfare, quality production factors, and effective reading to keep pace with the expansion of entrepreneurship related to concerned industries. 

It plays an important role that ensures the agricultural production sphere. The veterinary industry directly contributes to enhancing our total GDP by caring the livestock of our country. Proper caring ensures the continuous production of livestock through the veterinary industry.