What Bangladesh Can Learn From Farming in Developed Countries: A Specialist View

On 24 September 2025, Jagonews24 published an analysis by Samiran Biswas, described by the paper as an agriculture and environment specialist, on what Bangladesh could learn from farming in developed countries. He started from the point that Bangladesh is an agriculture-dependent country in which a large part of the population is directly involved in farming, and that climate change, population growth, shrinking farmland and the limited use of technology have put the sector under pressure. In his view the way developed countries manage agriculture, with their innovative methods, their use of technology and their models of farmer welfare, could serve as an example for making Bangladesh's farming more modern, sustainable and profitable.

The writer set out seven lessons: mechanisation, smart farming, research and innovation, a digital supply chain, organic farming, farmer welfare and social protection, and agricultural education and training. Learning from them, he argued, Bangladesh could bring about a smart agricultural revolution, provided that technology became easy to obtain, farmers were empowered, and research and policy support were in place. On that path, he wrote, the country could become not only self-sufficient in food but also an export-oriented and environmentally friendly agricultural economy. This report sets out each of his proposals together with the official figures and earlier reports, all published up to the date of the article, that show where Bangladesh stood on each point.

Official statistics support the writer's starting point that farming remains the country's largest employer. According to the Labour Force Survey 2022 of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), as analysed by The Business Standard in April 2023, agriculture's share of total employment rose from 40.6 percent in 2017 to 45.4 percent in 2022, while the share of industry fell from 20.4 percent to 17 percent over the same period. The same analysis noted that the employment of rural women had grown from 18.7 million in 2017 to 25 million in 2022.

Agriculture's weight in the economy as a whole moved the other way. The same report gave agriculture's share of gross domestic product (GDP) as 13.6 percent in fiscal year 2016-17 and 11.7 percent in 2021-22, while the share of industry rose from 32.7 percent to 35.3 percent. A growing share of the country's workers was thus earning a living from a sector that produced a smaller share of national output.

The latest national accounts available when the article appeared pointed to a difficult year for the sector. In provisional estimates released in May 2025, BBS put agricultural growth in fiscal year 2024-25 at 1.79 percent, compared with 3.30 percent in 2023-24, and overall GDP growth at 3.97 percent, against 4.22 percent the year before, The Business Standard reported. The same estimates put per capita income at about 2,820 US dollars, up from 2,738 dollars.

The writer's first lesson was mechanisation. In developed countries, he wrote, farm machinery such as tractors, combine harvesters and drones is widely used and saves time and labour, and drones are used to monitor the health of fields, spray pesticides and forecast yields. In Bangladesh these technologies were spreading gradually but remained limited, and he called for government and private initiatives to supply machinery on easy terms and to train farmers to use it.

Official data from the United States show how far such machinery has spread there. The Economic Research Service (ERS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported in December 2024 that in 2023 guidance autosteering systems on tractors, harvesters and other equipment were used by 52 percent of midsize farms and by 70 percent of large-scale crop-producing farms, and that yield monitors, yield maps and soil maps were used on 68 percent of large-scale crop-producing farms. ERS found that the use of these precision tools rose with the size of the farm and varied widely from one technology to another.

Bangladesh already had a large subsidy programme of the kind the writer described. The Daily Star reported in July 2023 that the government's agricultural mechanisation project, a five-year project worth Tk 3,020 crore launched in July 2020, was the third such project since 2009. Under it, farmers in haor and coastal areas could buy machines with a 70 percent subsidy and farmers elsewhere with a 50 percent subsidy, and 34 companies had been appointed to supply the machines. Buyers were entitled to three years of after-sales service from the appointed suppliers, and combine harvesters, power threshers and rice transplanters carried a one-year warranty covering fault-finding and repairs.

The same report described problems found by the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) of the Ministry of Planning in a survey of 1,824 farmers in 32 districts. About 74 percent said they had difficulty getting their names on the list of farmers eligible for a subsidy, about 43 percent said they had trouble receiving machines even after paying, and about 6 percent said they had received substandard machines. Farmers also reported delays in getting after-sales service from local suppliers. A farmer in Tangail who bought a combine harvester in 2021 told the paper that the machine worked well in its first year but performed worse afterwards, and that the difficulty of getting service had cut his productivity. These findings bear directly on the writer's call for machines on easy terms with training attached.

The second lesson was smart farming. Developed countries, the writer noted, use artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), sensors and satellite technology to learn the moisture, nutrient and disease status of their land, so that irrigation, fertiliser and pesticides can be applied at the right time. To introduce smart farming in Bangladesh, he wrote, farmers must be given digital training, and the technology must be made easy to reach through mobile phones, mobile apps and the internet, in the local language.

The approach he described is usually called precision agriculture: a management strategy that gathers, processes and analyses data on individual plants, animals and parts of a field and combines them with other information to support decisions, with the aim of using resources more efficiently and improving productivity, quality, profitability and sustainability. It became possible with satellite positioning (GPS and other GNSS systems), which lets a farmer map how yield, terrain, organic matter, moisture, nitrogen and other variables change across a field. Sensors mounted on GPS-equipped combine harvesters record such data, and variable-rate seeders and sprayers use it, together with satellite images, to distribute inputs where they are needed. Drones carrying multispectral cameras can photograph a field and produce maps of crop vigour, such as NDVI maps, which help decide where water, fertiliser or herbicide should go.

Bangladesh's experience with farm drones before the article was small but growing. The Daily Star reported in February 2017 that a master's student in electronics and communication engineering at Khulna University had built a radio-controlled drone, financed with Tk 4 lakh from the Ministry of Science and Technology, that could carry 3 litres of pesticide, fly for about 25 minutes on a full charge and spray one bigha in about half an hour, against two to three hours by hand. It was then awaiting clearance for commercial use. The same report said agriculturalists had used drones to monitor crops in Barisal and Patuakhali in 2015, the first such use in the country.

In April 2024, the Dhaka Tribune reported that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) had begun a seven-day course, run by geospatial experts of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), on using drones and satellite images to monitor crops and assess crop damage. About 20 DAE officers took part in the first round, which included a field visit to Sylhet, where floods had damaged crops in 2022. The grant came from the Japan Fund for Prosperous and Resilient Asia and the Pacific, funded by the Government of Japan.

Advice by mobile phone, another tool the writer mentioned, already existed in a basic form. The Dhaka Tribune reported in October 2016 that the DAE had started the Krishi Call Centre on the short code 16123 in June 2014. Calls are answered at Khamarbari in Dhaka by agricultural officers who use charts and manuals for common crop problems and, for new problems or those that need a field visit, give farmers the contact details of the officers in their area. The service was then open from 9 am to 5 pm except on Fridays and government holidays; calls were free at first and later cost 25 paisa a minute, the paper reported.

Third, the writer pointed to research. Developed countries invest heavily in agricultural research, he wrote, developing high-yielding, disease-resistant and climate-tolerant varieties and using genetic engineering and biotechnology to raise the quality of crops. He called for institutions such as the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) and the Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute (BLRI) to be strengthened and the scope of their research widened.

These institutes belong to the National Agricultural Research System, which is led by the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) at Farmgate in Dhaka. BARC was set up in 1973 under Presidential Order 32. Seven of the research institutes in the system come under the Ministry of Agriculture: BARI, BRRI, the Bangladesh Wheat and Maize Research Institute, the Soil Resource Development Institute, the Bangladesh Jute Research Institute, the Bangladesh Institute of Nuclear Agriculture and the Bangladesh Sugarcrop Research Institute. The Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute and BLRI come under the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock.

BRRI began as the East Pakistan Rice Research Institute on 1 October 1970 and took its present name by an act of parliament after independence. Its headquarters are at Joydebpur in Gazipur, and it has 17 regional stations across the country's agro-ecological zones. As of 2023 it had 786 staff, including 308 scientists, and its budget for 2022-23 was about Tk 1.1 billion, up from Tk 785 million in 2012-13. It also receives grants from the Asian Development Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Rice Research Institute and other partners. Its research is organised in seven programme areas, among them varietal development, pest management, farm mechanisation and technology transfer. One of its early high-yielding varieties, BR-3, spread across the country and was grown in all three rice seasons, Aus, Aman and Boro.

BARI, founded as an autonomous institute in 1976 and tracing its origins to the Dhaka farm of 1908, conducts research on all crops except rice, jute, sugarcane and tea, which have their own institutes. Its central station at Joydebpur covers 176 hectares, 126 of them experimental fields, and it has regional stations at Ishwardi, Jamalpur, Jessore, Hathazari, Rahmatpur and Akbarpur, hill stations at Khagrachari, Ramgarh and Raikhali, and research centres for tuber crops, wheat, horticulture, pulses, oil crops and spices. BLRI was founded in 1984 at Savar and carries out research on livestock; in 2014 it developed a layer chicken whose sex can be told on the first day of life.

The writer's concern about investment is borne out by the most detailed study of research spending. A 2014 country factsheet by the Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI) programme of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and BARC described Bangladesh's 2012 agricultural research intensity ratio, research spending measured against agricultural GDP, of 0.40 percent as very low, while noting that the National Agricultural Technology Project (2009-2014) had brought a marked increase in investment and that the number of agricultural researchers had grown considerably.

The fourth lesson concerned the supply chain. In developed countries, the writer wrote, farmers use digital platforms to market their produce and connect directly with consumers, and logistics and traceability are assured. To secure fair prices for Bangladeshi farmers he called for digital marketplaces and for modern cold chains and transport.

The government had launched such a platform five years earlier. Food for Nation, described as the country's first state-owned open agricultural marketplace, was inaugurated on 23 May 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic had broken supply chains, and was run under the a2i (Access to Information) programme with officials of the Department of Agricultural Marketing involved, The Business Standard reported in June 2020. Farmers, traders, stockists and buyers could post produce, check prices and quality and find contacts, and the site also listed daily crop prices. In its first month 1,352 users registered and 1,682 product advertisements were posted, and early sales included 60 tonnes of mangoes, 15 tonnes of vegetables and 166,000 litchis sent to parts of Dhaka. The same report showed the limits such a platform faces: transport costs discouraged buyers, delivery was easy for fruit through courier services but harder for other goods, and many potential users were still unfamiliar with the site.

The weak cold chain the writer mentioned has long been measured in lost produce. At a dialogue in Dhaka in September 2013, a chief scientific officer of BARI cited BBS figures for 2010-11 showing post-harvest losses ranging from 8.1 percent for litchi to 32.4 percent for jackfruit, with banana at 30.8 percent, tomato at 27.64 percent, cabbage at 24.44 percent and country bean at 24.29 percent. He said that cold storages were used almost entirely for potato, with virtually none for other horticultural crops, and that losses were much higher among traders than among farmers, The Daily Star reported. An earlier study led by Professor M Kamrul Hassan, with researchers of Bangladesh Agricultural University, reported in October 2011 that post-harvest wastage of 13 fruits and vegetables cost the country about Tk 3,442 crore a year at retail prices, with losses of 23.6 to 43.5 percent, and blamed poor transport from local to wholesale markets, the lack of storage and poor handling.

The article named no particular country. One developed country with the kind of export-oriented farm economy the writer described is the Netherlands. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported in January 2025 that the country exported agricultural goods worth 128.9 billion euros in 2024, 4.8 percent more than in 2023. The Dutch economy earned an estimated 47.4 billion euros from these exports, 42.3 billion of it from goods produced in the Netherlands and 5.2 billion from re-exports. Dairy and eggs led the list at 12.3 billion euros, followed by horticultural products at 11.9 billion and meat at 10.7 billion, and a quarter of the exports went to Germany.

Fifth, organic farming. In developed countries organic farming is popular, the writer noted: food is produced without chemicals, in an environmentally friendly and healthy way, and sells at high prices. To encourage it in Bangladesh he called for certification and branding systems, together with training and awareness.

Bangladesh had adopted a policy on the subject in 2016. The Daily Star reported in June 2017 that the government had approved the Bangladesh Organic Agriculture Policy the previous year and that the policy included a provision for forming a certification body. According to the paper, about 12,000 farmers were growing organic produce on some 7,000 hectares, or 0.19 percent of the country's farmland, and the number of organic farmers had doubled over the previous decade. Producers told the paper that supply fell well short of demand, and the chief executive of a food company warned that without a certification body many could claim their produce to be organic and cheat consumers.

In the United States, certification of the kind the writer called for is run by the National Organic Program of the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. The Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 required national standards, and the rule establishing the programme was published in 2000. Under it, only certified producers may call their products organic, with an exemption for growers selling less than 5,000 dollars a year, who must still follow the standards and keep records. Certification is carried out by state, non-profit and private agencies accredited by the USDA, the USDA organic seal is used on products with at least 95 percent organic ingredients, and the programme keeps a National List of the synthetic substances allowed and the natural substances prohibited in organic production.

Sixth, farmer welfare and social protection. In developed countries, the writer wrote, farmers have health insurance, crop insurance, retirement allowances and disaster support. Bangladesh, he argued, should make insurance schemes easier for farmers to join and ensure digital registration and delivery of benefits.

The best-known example abroad is the federal crop insurance programme of the United States, administered by the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, a wholly government-owned corporation managed by the USDA's Risk Management Agency. It grew out of the New Deal programmes of the 1930s, when the Dust Bowl drought left farmers unable to raise crops. The programme was expanded in 1980, premiums were subsidised to encourage farmers to take part, and laws passed in 1994, 1996 and 2000 reshaped it. Between 1980 and 2005 it recorded 43.6 billion dollars in claims, about three-quarters of them caused by three kinds of weather: drought, excess moisture and hail.

Bangladesh's own attempts remained pilots. The state-owned Sadharan Bima Corporation (SBC) introduced weather index-based crop insurance in March 2014 in drought-prone Rajshahi, flood-prone Sirajganj and cyclone-prone Noakhali, with the ADB providing Tk 16.38 crore of the Tk 21.34 crore cost and the government the rest. By April 2017, 6,772 marginal farmers had signed up against a target of 6,000, and SBC had paid claims of Tk 17.55 lakh for aman and potato harvests in Rajshahi and Noakhali, The Daily Star reported. An ADB financial sector specialist told the paper that it was a very complex product that required learning and awareness among everyone involved.

Five years later, cover was still thin. The Daily Star reported in October 2022, after Cyclone Sitrang had damaged the crops and fish farms of uninsured farmers, that Green Delta Insurance Company was the only insurer offering crop insurance as a commercial product, and that a weather index pilot had been running since 2021 in partnership with BRAC, the Syngenta Foundation and a Swiss-supported microinsurance project, with SBC and Green Delta issuing the policies. BRAC had covered 966 farmers in 2021 and 1,093 in 2022, and Green Delta said it had supported 600,000 farmers since 2015. A senior SBC official said premiums were high because weather and other data had to be bought and called for government subsidies, while people in the industry suggested an agriculture insurance guideline and a VAT waiver on farmers' premiums.

The seventh lesson was education and training. Farmers in developed countries regularly attend training, seminars and workshops and gain skills through technical colleges and online courses, the writer wrote. He proposed training centres at upazila level in Bangladesh and the introduction of mobile-based learning and video tutorials.

In the United States this role is played by the Cooperative Extension System, formally established by the Smith-Lever Act of 1914. It is publicly funded and run by the land-grant universities together with federal, state and local governments. The USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture provides federal oversight and formula funding, extension specialists at the universities turn campus research into programmes, and county extension offices and agents deliver them to local communities. Its programmes cover agriculture and natural resources, family and consumer sciences, community and economic development, and the 4-H youth organisation.

In Bangladesh the corresponding body is the Department of Agricultural Extension under the Ministry of Agriculture. It was formed in 1982 by merging the Agriculture Directorate (Extension and Management), the Jute Directorate, the Plant Protection Directorate, the Horticulture Board, the Tobacco Development Board and the Central Extension Resource and Development Institute. Until 1990 it trained farmers through the Training and Visit system and then moved to group training, and from 1996 its work has been planned under the New Agricultural Extension Policy. The 16123 call centre and the 2024 drone and satellite training for its officers, described above, were among its steps towards the technology-based advice the writer proposed.

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

Sources: Jagonews24 (Samiran Biswas, 24 September 2025), The Business Standard, The Daily Star, Dhaka Tribune, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, USDA Economic Research Service, IFPRI-ASTI and Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council, Statistics Netherlands (CBS), Wikipedia