Rice production must give priority to mechanisation, Agriculture Secretary Wahida Akter said. Rice is the staple food, and food security means the security of rice, she said, urging BRRI to coordinate with farm machinery manufacturers to push mechanisation further. She also stressed increasing Aus cultivation and production.
She was speaking on Saturday, 4 February, at a mid-term workshop of the project "Strengthening Farm Machinery Research Activity for Mechanised Rice Cultivation (SFMRA)" at the training building of the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) headquarters in Gazipur, organised by BRRI's Farm Machinery and Postharvest Technology Division and chaired by BRRI director general Dr. Md. Shahjahan Kabir.
Special guests included BARC executive chairman Dr. Sheikh Mohammad Bakhtiar, BARI director general Dr. Debashish Sarkar, additional secretary (planning) Md. Mahbubul Haque Patwary and additional secretary (extension) Robindrashree Barua, along with BRRI division heads and senior scientists.
What the project has produced
Project director and chief scientific officer Dr. A. K. M. Saiful Islam, presenting the keynote, said four machines have so far been developed and extended under the project:
- the BRRI seed sower;
- the BRRI whole-feed combine harvester;
- the BRRI solar light trap;
- the BRRI rope-making machine.
Work is under way on about eight more, including a BRRI manual rice transplanter and a power weeder. The project runs in 12 upazilas of 12 districts in seven divisions.
The director general expressed satisfaction with the project and said that if its benefits reach farmers, it will bring a revolution in farm mechanisation. The project's main aim is to strengthen farm machinery research to develop and modernise suitable machines for sustainable rice cultivation.
Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.
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