Farmer card could open a new horizon for Bangladesh agriculture, specialist writes

On 18 March 2026, Jagonews24 published a column by Samiran Biswas, an agriculture and environment specialist, under the title "The farmer card: a new horizon for agriculture". He argued that the farmer card the government was preparing to introduce could become a single platform through which genuine farmers receive fertiliser, seed, pesticide, financial support and information, and that it could transform farming in Bangladesh if it was implemented properly. The column appeared less than four weeks before the date the government had set for the formal start of card distribution, Pahela Baishakh (14 April 2026), while the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) was collecting data on farmers in the first upazilas chosen for a pre-pilot.

Biswas began from the place of farming in national life. Agriculture, he wrote, is the foundation of Bangladesh's economy, culture and rural life; a large part of the population depends on it directly or indirectly, and its contribution runs from food security to employment. The farmer keeps that sector alive, and in his words the country's overall development is not possible unless farmers prosper. Among the steps the government was taking to ease farmers' problems, he counted the farmer card as one of the most important: it looks like an identity card, but he described it as a platform for a wide range of benefits and services rather than proof of identity alone.

Farmers in Bangladesh have faced the same problems for a long time, Biswas wrote: identifying who is a genuine farmer, distributing fertiliser fairly, getting quality seed and paying a fair price for pesticides. He noted that there have been allegations of irregularity and corruption in all of these areas, and that genuine farmers are often left out while middlemen take the benefit. In his account, the card answers this by building a database of farmers through which the government can deliver services directly, which he expected to raise transparency and accountability.

Officials had described the same aim. The Daily Star reported on 7 March 2026 that Obaidur Rahman Mondol, director of the DAE's field service wing, said the government had identified the need for a centralised digital registry of farmers because no comprehensive database existed, which limited data-driven policy decisions. A digital system, he said, would give real-time information on crop production and subsidy needs and keep ineligible people from receiving benefits.

The size of the group such a registry has to cover is large. According to the Agriculture Census 2019 of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), as cited by The Daily Star, the number of agriculture-based households had risen to more than 16.88 million. The Daily Star also cited BBS figures showing that agriculture contributed about 11.03 percent of gross domestic product in fiscal year 2024-25, and that its share of employment rose from 40.6 percent in 2016-17 to 45.33 percent in 2022, making it the chief source of jobs.

Fertiliser is one of the main inputs of crop production, Biswas wrote, yet farmers often suffer from shortages, black marketing and excessive prices, and in many seasons they cannot get fertiliser at the critical moment, which hurts yields. With the card, he argued, the government could easily work out how much land each farmer has and how much fertiliser he or she needs, so that the right amount reaches the farmer at the right time and at a fair price, lowering the cost of production.

The weight of fertiliser in Bangladesh's farming explains why its distribution matters. Banglapedia, the national encyclopaedia, notes that chemical fertilisers were introduced in the country in the early 1950s, that their use rose steadily from the mid-1960s with modern varieties and irrigation, and that inorganic fertilisers are responsible for about half of total crop production; urea supplies almost all of the nitrogen that crops receive. The Daily Star reported that the government allocated Tk 17,000 crore in each of the fiscal year 2024-25 and 2025-26 budgets for subsidies on fertiliser, seed, machinery and other inputs, and that Tk 27,224 crore was proposed for the agriculture sector in 2025-26.

On seed, the writer said quality seed is essential for good yields, while poor seed lowers output and leaves farmers with losses; many farmers, he wrote, are cheated into buying substandard or adulterated seed. Through the card, improved seed could be supplied directly to registered farmers by the government or approved organisations, protecting them from fraud, raising production and supporting food security.

Pesticides came next. They are important for protecting crops, Biswas wrote, but adulterated or low-quality products are often found on the market; they damage crops and carry risks for the environment, and farmers also lose money by paying too much. The card, in his view, would let the government supply quality pesticides at fair prices through approved sellers, so that farmers get the right product and their harvests stay safe.

The government provides subsidies, crop insurance, incentives and loans, Biswas noted, but farmers seeking them often face complications, brokers and corruption, and genuine farmers are frequently left out. Because the card creates a reliable database of cardholders, he argued, financial support could be paid to them directly; payment by mobile banking or into a bank account would reduce the room for middlemen and ensure transparency.

He also wrote that the dominance of middlemen is one of the biggest problems of the farm economy: they often buy crops cheaply from farmers and sell them at a higher price, and they make extra profit on fertiliser, seed and pesticide as well. If farmers could obtain inputs directly from government or approved sources, he argued, middlemen's influence would fall, farmers would get fair prices and their incomes would rise.

Credit was already on the new government's agenda when the column appeared. At the new cabinet's first formal meeting in late February 2026, the government decided to waive farm loans of up to Tk 10,000 each, including interest, to benefit an estimated 1.2 million farmers, Bangla Tribune and the Daily Inqilab reported. Cabinet Secretary Nasimul Ghani said the waiver would apply to crop, fisheries and livestock farmers. According to Bangladesh Bank data cited by Bangla Tribune, outstanding farm loans of that size, with interest, came to about Tk 1,550 crore across state-owned, specialised and private banks; Bangladesh Krishi Bank held the most, Tk 625.40 crore owed by 661,763 borrowers, followed by Sonali Bank with Tk 413 crore owed by 215,932 borrowers and Rajshahi Krishi Unnayan Bank with Tk 148.79 crore owed by 149,564 borrowers.

Institutional farm credit was growing. The Financial Express reported on 1 February 2026, citing Bangladesh Bank, that agricultural loan disbursement reached Tk 210.08 billion in July-December of fiscal year 2025-26, up 29.2 percent on a year earlier, against a full-year target of Tk 390 billion; outstanding farm loans stood at Tk 627.23 billion. Stakeholders quoted in that report said small and marginal farmers still relied heavily on informal credit.

The card was a pledge in the election manifesto that the BNP announced on 6 February 2026, ahead of the 12 February parliamentary election. According to Prothom Alo, the manifesto said subsidies, easy credit, farm insurance and state-managed marketing would be strengthened through the farmer card to ensure fair prices for crops, and that fish farmers, livestock farmers and small traders in the farm sector would also receive the benefit. The Daily Star counted 15 agriculture-related commitments in that manifesto, including the card, the loan waiver and precision farming.

On 23 February 2026, Prime Minister Tarique Rahman chaired the first meeting on introducing the card, at the Cabinet Division's conference room in the Secretariat. Information and Broadcasting Minister Zahir Uddin Swapan told reporters that the decision had been taken in principle long before and that a pilot similar to the Family Card would start as soon as possible, though no date could yet be given. New Age reported him as saying the card would give farmers direct access to agricultural advice, easier access to machinery and supplies of fertiliser, pesticide and seed, and would let the authorities compile data on market trends, production and weather. Asked whether local influential people or intermediaries could exploit it, he said the system was designed to prevent such leakage: "There will be no middlemen." The ultimate goal, he said, was to issue cards in phases to all farmers in the official statistics.

A review meeting chaired by the prime minister on 4 March 2026 set the details, according to his press secretary Saleh Shibly, as reported by The Daily Star and its Bengali edition. Card distribution was to be formally launched on a trial basis on 14 April, Pahela Baishakh of the Bengali year 1433, and a four-member committee of secretaries headed by the finance secretary was formed to oversee the programme. The DAE under the Ministry of Agriculture would implement it. In the pre-pilot, data on farmers of all categories would be collected within 45 days and cards distributed in nine blocks of nine upazilas in the eight divisions: Tangail Sadar, Shibganj in Bogura, Panchagarh Sadar, Islampur in Jamalpur, Shailkupa in Jhenaidah, Nesarabad in Pirojpur, Juri in Moulvibazar, Cumilla Sadar and Teknaf in Cox's Bazar. After the pre-pilot and pilot, the plan was to cover every upazila within four years.

The press secretary listed ten services to be delivered in stages through the card:

• farm inputs at fair prices
• government subsidies and incentives
• farm machinery at affordable rates
• irrigation at fair prices
• farm loans on easy terms
• agricultural insurance
• sale of farm produce at fair prices
• agricultural training
• weather and market information through digital platforms
• advice on crop diseases and pest control

He said fish farmers, livestock rearers and dairy farmers would be covered as well as crop growers, and that each landless, marginal and small farmer would receive an average of Tk 2,500 as a subsidy or input grant, with grants at government-set rates for certain categories in the Kharif-1 and Kharif-2 seasons. On 7 March The Daily Star reported that around 25,000 farmers would be covered in the pre-pilot. The DAE director said a Farmers' Card Implementation Policy 2026 was being drafted, that the data would be stored at the National Data Centre to international security standards and updated every season, three times a year, and that lost cards or data errors could be corrected online or through the local agriculture officer. Agriculture Minister Mohammad Amin Ur Rashid told the paper that the most vulnerable farmers would receive benefits similar to those under the Family Card.

Further steps followed in the days before the column. Bangla Tribune reported that officials expected the card to carry a digital profile with land size and crop type, linked to the farmer's national identity card number and mobile phone, and that the authorities had warned that the card is free and nobody should pay anyone for it. The Daily Inqilab reported that registration would go through the sub-assistant agriculture officer of each block, who prepares the first list. On 15 March a meeting chaired by the prime minister at the Parliament Secretariat confirmed the Pahela Baishakh launch, the state news agency BSS reported, and on 16 March the agriculture minister told reporters in Lalmai, Cumilla, that preparations were almost complete.

The idea of registering farmers was not new. In July 2023 the then agriculture minister, Muhammad Abdur Razzaque, told parliament that farmers were registered and given an Agricultural Input Assistance Card to receive incentives, rehabilitation, financial benefits and farm loans, and that 20,599,869 farmers across the country held it, Prothom Alo reported. In September 2010 Bangladesh Bank instructed state-owned banks to help the very poor open accounts with a deposit of Tk 10 so that they could receive safety-net benefits; private banks followed, and by 30 June 2017 banks had opened 17.1 million such accounts, The Daily Star reported in 2017.

Digital versions were planned before. In February 2022, Prothom Alo English, citing UNB, reported a DAE project for digital identities and smart agriculture cards: digital profiles for 16.2 million farmers, a cost of more than Tk 1.7 billion and a deadline of September 2024, starting in nine districts. A DAE official said then that many farmers had lost their Tk 10 agricultural cards and that banks faced problems when disbursing incentives. In January 2025 The Daily Star reported that the DAE had published a draft Farmer Smart Card Policy 2025, proposing a national database of farmers with profiles and registration IDs by 2030, as part of the Programme on Agricultural and Rural Transformation for Nutrition, Entrepreneurship and Resilience (PARTNER), a five-year programme begun in July 2023 and costing about Tk 7,000 crore, funded by the government, the World Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Biswas described the card as part of a digital system rather than a simple plastic card. Farmers' information could be stored, updated and analysed through it, which would make planning and implementation easier: it would show, for example, which crops dominate in which region and where problems lie, so that the government could act quickly and effectively. Linked in future to smart farming, he wrote, the card could revolutionise the sector.

He set this in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, under which the use of technology in farming was growing fast and opening new possibilities for productivity and efficiency. He named three technologies in particular: artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data. AI-based mobile apps, he wrote, help farmers identify crop diseases, manage fertiliser and farm at the right time, while modern weather forecasting gives advance warning and reduces risk. IoT-based digital soil sensors measure soil moisture, nutrients and temperature in real time, so that fertiliser and irrigation can be applied in the right amounts. Spray drones save time and labour and apply pesticide quickly and evenly, and big data analysis gives advance insight into production, market demand and price trends to help farmers decide. If these technologies were connected with the card, he argued, farming could become more sustainable, profitable and modern.

Precision farming was among the BNP's manifesto commitments, The Daily Star noted on 10 February 2026; experts it interviewed said most manifestos were vague on how such benefits would reach farmers, and M Asaduzzaman, a former research director of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, said there was little explanation of how landless or marginal farmers would benefit from advanced techniques.

The writer also saw a social gain. The card recognises its holder as a registered farmer who plays an important part in the economy, he wrote, which raises farmers' social standing and lets them take pride in their work. The prime minister's press secretary used similar language on 4 March, calling the card a symbol of every farmer's rightful entitlements, dignity and security rather than just an identity card.

Biswas did not treat success as certain. He listed the challenges: errors in identifying genuine farmers, information that is not kept up to date, technical limitations and a lack of awareness. To meet them he called for regular data updates, training, better technical infrastructure and awareness among farmers, so that they know the card's benefits and use it correctly.

Others had raised the same points. Prof Golam Hafeez Kennedy, an agricultural economist, told The Financial Express in February 2026 that starting with a pilot was wise but required coordination among the DAE, the Department of Agricultural Marketing, the BBS and the Directorate General of Food. He put the number of farming families at about 15 million, more than four million of them landless, and stressed that sharecroppers who do not own land must be brought into the database for the card to be inclusive. Asaduzzaman told The Daily Star that about half of the country's farmers own less than one acre. When the draft smart card policy was published in 2025, Prof Mohammad Jahangir Alam of Bangladesh Agricultural University's Department of Agribusiness and Marketing told The Daily Star that the database must be maintained continuously, with land records updated whenever land is bought or sold.

For Biswas, the measure of success was implementation. Making farming stronger and more sustainable requires securing farmers' welfare, he wrote, and the card is an important step towards it: it can ensure fertiliser, seed and pesticide at fair prices, make government support easier to reach and weaken the hold of middlemen. If it is implemented properly, he argued, it will open a new horizon for Bangladesh's agriculture, raising production and strengthening the wider economy; its effective implementation, in his words, was a demand of the time.

Photo: Balaram Mahalder / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Sources: Jagonews24 (column by Samiran Biswas), The Daily Star, The Daily Star Bangla, Prothom Alo, Prothom Alo English, Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS), Bangla Tribune, Jugantor, The Daily Inqilab, New Age, The Financial Express, Banglapedia