Bangladesh preparing a 25-year master plan to modernise agriculture

Bangladesh's Ministry of Agriculture was in the final stage of preparing a 25-year master plan to make the country's farming modern and sustainable over the long term, the agriculture secretary said in Dhaka on Thursday, 27 November 2025. The integrated framework took account of future risks and of technological progress, he said, and work on it was nearly finished: its final draft was expected to be ready in December.

Agriculture Secretary Dr Mohammad Emdad Ullah Mian gave the details as chief guest on the opening day of an international conference titled "Political Commitment in Agriculture and Food", organised by the Bangladesh Agricultural Journalists Forum (BAJF) at the CIRDAP auditorium in the capital. The first day's theme was "Transforming agriculture: locally suitable farm machinery and the challenges of exporting farm products". Scientists of the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), the managing director of the Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) and a director of the PRAN-RFL Group also spoke, on farm machinery, rural finance, rice yields and the export of processed food.

The secretary said the plan was being built around 13 main sectors and the many sub-sectors under them. Separate 25-year roadmaps were also being prepared for 17 agencies and research institutes linked to agriculture. Alongside the long-term plan, several five-year projects would be taken up in the short term, but each of them, he said, would be taken up only after detailed research and scrutiny.

The English edition of Jagonews24, which reported the same speech, described the framework as designed to address future risks, climate uncertainties, gaps in mechanisation and the demands of global markets, and said the separate roadmaps for the 17 organisations were meant to align their innovation, research and future priorities.

The plan had been in the making for some months. At a seminar organised by the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) at Gazipur Agricultural University on 4 September 2025, the same secretary said that the Ministry of Agriculture was, for the first time, working on a strategy covering 25 years, with the aim of ensuring safe and nutritious food for everyone by 2050, the state news agency BSS reported. At that seminar he also said the government would give Tk 39,000 crore in agricultural loans in the current fiscal year, and that it would try to find and support people who needed help to become real entrepreneurs.

Earlier still, in January 2025, the secretary had told a BAJF training programme on agricultural journalism at the Press Institute of Bangladesh that no additional funds would be allocated to agricultural projects unnecessarily in future. He said then that the development of unnecessary rice varieties was being halted, and that research institutions had been told to make sure that seeds which benefit farmers actually reach them, because a larger number of varieties brings no benefit if they do not perform in the field, The Business Standard reported.

The Bangladesh Agricultural Journalists Forum is an association of journalists who report on agriculture for newspapers, television channels and news portals. In January 2025 it held a two-day workshop on agricultural journalism at the Press Institute of Bangladesh, attended by at least 50 journalists from media outlets across the country. In September 2025 it announced a new committee for its 2026-2027 session at a programme in the KIB conference room in Dhaka, made up of reporters and editors from national dailies, television channels and online outlets.

The venue belongs to the Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP), a regional, intergovernmental and autonomous organisation established in 1979. Its mandate is to promote and strengthen integrated rural development in its 15 member countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Iran, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. Its headquarters are at Chameli House on Topkhana Road in Dhaka.

On reform of fertiliser management, the secretary said: "We are formulating a policy that will save two to three thousand crore taka every year. This year we have saved one thousand crore taka." He added that Tk 600 crore of an agricultural mechanisation project had gone back to the government treasury, because the whole project had been completed with Tk 20 crore. The reports of his speech did not name the project or explain the figures further.

The fertiliser savings were a theme he had raised before. In January 2025 he said that closed or abandoned jute mills would be converted into fertiliser warehouses as part of a long-term plan to raise storage capacity, that alternative locations were being explored besides new storage facilities, and that a project to increase fertiliser storage was already under way. Greater storage, he said then, would let the country buy fertiliser at lower prices on the world market and could save Tk 1,500 crore to Tk 2,000 crore a year.

His figures sat beside a large annual subsidy bill. In the national budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year, presented on 2 June 2025, the finance adviser proposed Tk 17,241 crore in agricultural subsidies, against Tk 17,058 crore in the revised budget for 2024-25, according to the budget summary as reported by Bangladesh Times. The budget speech said the government was giving the necessary subsidies on fertiliser and other inputs and had increased the buffer stock of fertiliser, and that disbursement of subsidies on both imported and domestically produced fertilisers had been speeded up to clear pending payments.

Subsidised farm machines had been the subject of the country's largest farm scheme of recent years. In July 2020 the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council approved a Tk 3,020 crore project, then described as the biggest ever for the farm sector, to help farmers buy combine harvesters, rice transplanters, power threshers, dryers, power weeders, power sprayers, potato diggers and maize shellers. Farmers in the haors of the north-east and in the southern coastal region would pay 30 percent of a machine's price and the government 70 percent; elsewhere, farmers and the government would each pay half. The project was to support the purchase of 51,300 machines by June 2025, when the five-year project would end, and to train 9,000 mechanics and extension officials. When it was approved, The Daily Star reported, 99 percent of planting and harvesting in the country was still done by hand.

The secretary turned to prices. "When vegetables cost Tk 100 a kilo, nobody says anything, but when onions reach Tk 100 a storm of discussion begins. Should farmers not get a fair price?" he asked. He set out a target of self-sufficiency in ginger and onion within the next three years, and expressed deep regret over the suicide of a farmer who had not received a fair price for his potatoes. Closing the session, he said that there would be no sustainable agricultural economy without fair prices for farmers and that all necessary measures would be taken to protect their interests, Jagonews24's English edition reported.

Onion prices were high when he spoke. On 10 November 2025 Prothom Alo reported that onions were selling for Tk 110-120 a kilogram in Dhaka's markets, against Tk 70-75 a month earlier. According to a review by the Bangladesh Trade and Tariff Commission, the average November price had been Tk 115 a kilogram in 2023 and Tk 130 in 2024, and stood at Tk 105 so far in November 2025. Bangladesh produced 44.48 lakh tonnes of onions in the 2024-25 fiscal year, but because of storage problems and other losses only about 33 lakh tonnes reached the market, the commission found. The country imported 483,000 tonnes of onions in the last fiscal year, 99 percent of them from India, with a 10 percent tariff on imports. There were no government-run cold stores for onions, so farmers kept their crop at home, and the commission recommended public storage and steps against middlemen. On 9 November The Daily Star reported that the commission had advised the government to authorise imports to steady the market.

Ginger depends even more on imports. A 2023 report of the Department of Agricultural Marketing, cited by The Business Standard in June 2024, put annual demand above 300,000 tonnes against production of about 192,000 tonnes in the 2022-23 fiscal year, so that 42-45 percent had to be imported, from China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand. Department of Agricultural Extension data cited in the same report showed 42,680 tonnes produced on 7,020 hectares in 1990-91. In December 2024 The Daily Star reported that the Spices Research Centre was encouraging farmers in the Rangpur region to grow the BARI-1 and BARI-2 ginger varieties in sacks, a method that was spreading on fallow land and homesteads.

The potato grower's plight had been in the news since the main harvest. On 27 August 2025 the agriculture ministry set a minimum price of Tk 22 a kilogram for potatoes at cold-storage gates and announced that the government would buy 50,000 tonnes, store them and sell them in October and November, and would give incentives to potato farmers in the next season, on the advice of a four-member committee chaired by the agriculture secretary with the commerce, food and finance secretaries as members. At the start of the season many farmers had sold at the field for as little as Tk 11 a kilogram, against the Department of Agricultural Extension's estimated average production cost of Tk 14, and up to Tk 20 in some northern areas; the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics estimated the harvest at a record 1.15 crore tonnes, The Daily Star reported. At the 4 September seminar, BSS reported, the secretary said that this was the first time the government had fixed a price at the cold-storage gate and the first time it had decided to buy 50,000 tonnes of potatoes, because there was no room for satisfaction if farmers did not get a fair price for what they grew.

By mid-October the slump had deepened. The Business Standard reported on 15 October 2025 that potatoes were selling at cold-storage gates for Tk 8-10 a kilogram; that Department of Agricultural Extension data showed about 1.3 crore tonnes produced on 5.24 lakh hectares, against a target area of 4.67 lakh hectares; and that, according to the Bangladesh Cold Storage Association, national demand was about 90 lakh tonnes while cold-storage capacity stood at 45 lakh tonnes. The paper reported that by then the ministry had not enforced the minimum price and the government had not yet bought potatoes from farmers or traders.

The keynote paper was presented by Dr K M Saiful Islam, director of BRRI's mechanised rice cultivation project. He said BRRI was building a complete ecosystem for making farm machinery in the country, to reduce dependence on imports. With technical support from Sri Lanka, Japan and other countries, quality farm machinery was now being made at home, he said, which would bring a major change in time, cost and the shortage of labour. BRRI, he said, was working on an integrated framework that brought together the creation of entrepreneurs in the field, training of mechanics, service hubs and the supply of spare parts.

BRRI's machine-making work had reached a factory floor two years earlier. On 31 December 2023 the Dhaka Tribune reported that BRRI and Alim Industries Limited had begun production of a locally suitable whole-feed combine harvester at the company's plant in Sylhet, funded by BRRI's Strengthening Farm Machinery Research Activity for Mechanized Rice Cultivation project, the first time such a harvester had been made on an assembly line in Bangladesh. The project's presentation then said that whole-feed combine harvesters were being imported from China, Korea, Vietnam and other countries, and that the local machine was expected to cost Tk 22-25 lakh to produce against Tk 40-45 lakh for an imported one, while local materials would make maintenance and spare parts easier.

BRRI scientific officer Durul Huda pointed to the barriers that held back the making of modern farm machinery. Inefficiency in the light engineering sector, the lack of CNC-based technology and a shortage of skilled workers, he said, together kept local manufacturers from building combine harvesters or rice transplanters of international standard. He regretted that even 54 years after independence no state institution had been established to make engines, and that the closure of old industries had weakened the country's industrial base.

PKSF Managing Director Md Fazlul Kader said agriculture should not be seen only as a sector of production; it had to be established as a profitable, respected and educated profession. He said PKSF's partner organisations disburse Tk 1.40 lakh crore a year in the field, 40 percent of which goes to agriculture, and that about 85 percent of the country's farm finance comes through microfinance institutions.

PKSF describes itself as an apex development organisation set up by the government, which formally came into being on 13 November 1989. It does not lend to farmers directly: through its partner organisations it provides financial assistance and institutional support for inclusive financial programmes that create productive employment for the moderate and ultra poor, small and marginal farmers and micro-entrepreneurs. The Tk 39,000 crore in agricultural loans that the secretary spoke of in September 2025 was a separate, government figure.

BRRI Director General Dr Mohammad Khalequzzaman said that after independence food security had been the main goal, and yields were then one and a half to two tonnes a hectare. In many places they now exceeded eight to ten tonnes, he said, and with the development of hybrid varieties and technology the average yield would in future rise above 10 tonnes.

BRRI is an autonomous research organisation established in 1970 at Joydebpur in Gazipur to develop rice varieties and the methods to manage them in the country's different ecosystems, according to Banglapedia. Farm machinery and post-harvest technology is one of its research divisions, and farm mechanisation is one of its programme areas.

Figures released by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics in November 2025 showed the scale of the crop. Farmers produced 4.06 crore tonnes of rice in the 2024-25 fiscal year, marginally below 4.07 crore tonnes the year before, The Daily Star reported on 12 November. Boro production rose 1.2 percent to 2.13 crore tonnes, the highest dry-season harvest on record, while Aus fell to 27.93 lakh tonnes and Aman to 1.64 crore tonnes. Hybrid rice, which yields 14 percent more than high-yielding varieties according to the report, covered 12.96 lakh hectares of the Boro crop out of 48.89 lakh hectares. For 2025-26 the Department of Agricultural Extension had set targets of 32 lakh tonnes of Aus, 1.81 crore tonnes of Aman and 2.27 crore tonnes of Boro, and Aman had been transplanted on 59.28 lakh hectares. The department estimated crop losses of Tk 212 crore across 29 districts from unseasonal heavy rain and gusty wind in late October and early November, intensified by Cyclone Montha.

PRAN-RFL Group Director (Marketing) Kamruzzaman Kamal said: "The world market for agro-processing is worth four trillion dollars. In our country the market is only one billion dollars. We have many opportunities here. The processing sector lacks diversity, and the sector has some weaknesses too. There are 400 companies, but not all of them can make high-quality products."

He said that exporting a farm product requires permission from 18 offices, which costs money and time, so a one-stop service should be introduced. The country needed country branding, he said, its embassies abroad should be put to work for it, and Bangladesh had to do more in commercial diplomacy, as other countries do.

"Quality control for farm exports has not developed as it should. There is a shortage of international-standard laboratories. Many products have to be tested in India and Singapore. Many countries do not accept BSTI standards. We should improve in setting standards. To ensure safe food, we have to work from the village level," he said, referring to the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution.

Official figures put the sector's exports close to the one billion dollars he described. According to the Export Promotion Bureau, Bangladesh exported agricultural products worth $989 million in the 2024-25 fiscal year, against $964 million in 2023-24, equal to 2.05 percent of total exports. In July 2025 The Daily Star reported that exports of these products to India had fallen to $145 million from $192 million, after India barred the entry of processed food and some other goods through all its land ports except Bhomra. Kamal told the paper then that PRAN-RFL had to route all its consignments through Bhomra in Satkhira, which raised costs, and that mandatory laboratory testing after entry could delay shipments by up to 10 days. The Ministry of Commerce had set a target of 15 percent growth in agro-processed food exports for that fiscal year.

Photo: Tanvir Rahat / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, Jagonews24 English, Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS), The Business Standard, The Daily Star, Dhaka Tribune, Prothom Alo, Bangladesh Times, Banglapedia, Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF), Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP)