31 Lakh Unsold Sacrificial Animals Deepen Bangladesh Farmers' Losses

Across Bangladesh, about 31 lakh animals that farmers had raised for sacrifice were left unsold after Eid-ul-Azha, which fell on 28 May 2026. Reporting the glut on 4 June 2026, farmers and seasonal traders said they had built a whole year's hopes around the festival, expecting to make a little profit by selling cattle and goats at the qurbani markets. Many did not get the prices they expected, and the animals they brought back home have become, in the farmers' own words, a further blow on top of an already heavy loss. The cost of feed, medicine and daily care for these returned animals is now an added burden they must carry until the animals can be sold.

According to the Department of Livestock Services (DLS) and the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, 1.23 crore (12.3 million) animals were prepared for sacrifice this year, against an estimated demand of 1,01,06,000 (about 1.01 crore). About 92 lakh animals were actually sacrificed, roughly nine lakh fewer than the estimated demand, leaving some 31 lakh animals raised for the festival unsold. Before Eid, the DLS had listed 1,23,33,840 animals as available against demand of 1,01,06,334; of these, 56,95,878 were cattle and buffaloes, 66,32,307 were goats and sheep, and a few thousand were other animals. On paper this pointed to a comfortable surplus, which by the end of the festival had turned into a pile of unsold stock.

Md Shahjaman Khan, acting director general of the DLS, told Jagonews24: "We are getting information that sacrifices were somewhat lower than expected. Data is still being collected from the field. A full list will be published at a press conference at the ministry by Thursday." Those involved in the trade said seasonal traders and farmers had been pushed into losses at the last minute by the pressure of unsold animals, and that, as in previous years, high inflation and a sluggish economy had reduced the number of animals sacrificed.

This year's total was slightly higher than last year's. In 2025, about 91 lakh animals were sacrificed. That figure had itself been about 13 lakh lower than in 2024, when roughly 1.04 crore animals were sacrificed across the country for Eid-ul-Azha. Taken together, the last few years show sacrifices settling well below their earlier peak, even as the domestic supply of animals kept rising. A Dhaka Tribune report on 22 May 2026, citing DLS data, likewise noted that supply had been climbing and that more animals were prepared this year than the estimated demand.

Analysts linked the fall to the wider economy. They said economic weakness, a slowdown in trade, rising poverty, high inflation and reduced purchasing power were all weighing on the qurbani market, while higher production costs had pushed animal prices up sharply in recent years, placing them beyond the reach of many low and lower-middle-income families.

Agricultural economist Jahangir Alam Khan, a former director general of the Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute (BLRI), told Jagonews24 that animal prices had risen because farmers' costs had gone up, while high inflation had cut ordinary people's purchasing power. "They are struggling just to meet daily expenses," he said. "Apart from government employees and senior staff at good private companies, even businesspeople are facing a slump. So those who used to sacrifice an animal alone shared one this year; those who used to give a small cow gave a goat; and those who could barely manage before could not sacrifice at all."

Ripon Kumar Mondal, professor of agricultural economics at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University in Dhaka, said the economic weakness that followed the Covid-19 period had not yet lifted. "Meanwhile animal prices have risen fast," he said. "Many middle-class people cannot afford to spend Tk 1 lakh or more on a cow, so they are buying goats, or not sacrificing at all. Financial weakness is now a major reason for the fall in sacrifices."

Eid-ul-Azha, the festival of sacrifice, is one of the two main festivals in the Muslim calendar and falls on the tenth day of Dhul-Hijjah. Over the three days of the festival, families who can afford it sacrifice a permitted animal and distribute the meat; by custom it is divided into three parts, one kept for the household, one shared with relatives and neighbours, and one given to the poor. In Bangladesh the animals used are overwhelmingly cattle, along with goats, buffaloes and sheep. A goat or a sheep counts as one share, while a cow, a buffalo or a camel may be shared among up to seven people, each taking an equal portion of the meat. It is this system of shares that farmers and economists mean by "bhaage qurbani", or shared sacrifice.

It is this practice that has expanded as costs have risen. People who once bought a whole animal are now clubbing together to buy one between several households, and families who once offered a cow are turning to a single goat, which is far cheaper. Moqbul Hossain, managing director of North Bengal Dairy Farm in Chholmaid, Bhatara, Dhaka, told Jagonews24 that shared sacrifices at his farm had more than doubled this year compared with the year before, and that many did not sacrifice at all. "We found many customers who used to take a cow from the farm or share a sacrifice every year but did not do so this time," he said. The report also noted that recent political circumstances had had some adverse effect on the market.

The animals used must meet long-standing conditions. By tradition a cow or buffalo should be at least two years old and a goat or sheep at least one year, and the animal should be healthy and free of serious defects such as lameness, blindness or extreme thinness. It is partly for this reason that farmers raise and fatten cattle specifically for the festival, aiming to have a sound, well-grown animal ready for the few days of the qurbani markets. An animal prepared to a particular weight for that window is hard to hold back or sell elsewhere, which is why a failed sale hurts so much.

Farmers said the animals brought back from the qurbani markets often fall ill from the stress of the journey and lose condition. Every taka spent on their feed, medicine and care until they are finally sold is an extra cost, and in the days after Eid the glut of unsold animals pushes market prices down further, deepening the loss.

Mohammad Iqbal Hossain, president of the Bangladesh Dairy and Fattening Farmers Association, told Jagonews24 that although not all of a farm's cattle are taken to market, a cow weighing five to six maunds (roughly 185 to 225 kilograms) that fails to sell at Eid later loses 50 to 100 kilograms, because such animals are fattened specifically for the festival. "Those whose cattle did not sell are now suffering heavy losses," he said, adding that feed, medicine and farm running costs had risen abnormally over the past few years and that the government needed to pay attention to the problem.

The association's general secretary, Mostafizur Rahman, said a large part of the animals farmers had brought to market remained unsold. "From late 2025 until Eid, cattle feed prices were at an all-time high, but farmers sold cattle at last year's prices," he said. "Prices fell further a day or two before Eid, when most farmers had to sell at a loss, and those who still have animals are in an even worse position."

Feed is the single biggest cost in fattening cattle. Animals in Bangladesh are generally fed straw, green grass and fodder along with concentrate feed made from rice bran, wheat bran, maize, pulse husks and oil cakes, much of which has to be imported. Farmers' groups have long said that rising world prices for feed grains and oil cakes, together with a weaker currency, had pushed the cost of cattle feed up over recent years. When an animal fattened at that cost over a year does not sell, the expected profit turns into a mounting loss for the farmer.

The losses come against the background of a sector that has grown into one of the mainstays of rural Bangladesh. According to the DLS publication Livestock Economy at a Glance 2023-24, the country had about 2.50 crore cattle, 2.71 crore goats, 39 lakh sheep and 15 lakh buffaloes. Meat production reached 92.25 lakh tonnes in 2023-24, up from 87.10 lakh tonnes the year before, while milk production stood at 150.44 lakh tonnes. In that year the sector contributed about 1.80 percent of national GDP and more than 16 percent of agricultural GDP, and it grew at about 3.15 percent.

The sector is backed by dedicated public institutions. The Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute (BLRI), set up at Savar near Dhaka under an ordinance of 1984 and in operation since 1987, is the country's main autonomous body for research on cattle, buffalo, goats, sheep and poultry, with regional stations at Baghabari in Sirajganj and Naikhongchhari in Bandarban. Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University in Dhaka is one of the public universities that train the agricultural economists and veterinarians the industry depends on. Officials have long credited the research, breeding and extension effort behind the sector with allowing domestic farms to replace the cattle once brought in from across the border.

That growth is the reason the country can now meet the entire demand for sacrificial animals from its own farms. For many years informal cattle imports from neighbouring India filled part of the Eid demand, but as those flows fell the government and the DLS encouraged domestic rearing, and by the mid-2020s officials were reporting a comfortable annual surplus of animals. The 2026 figures followed the same pattern, with supply of more than 1.23 crore animals against demand of about 1.01 crore. A surplus, however, is a double-edged outcome for farmers, because when buyers hold back the same surplus becomes a glut of unsold stock.

The DLS also reports that Bangladesh has become self-sufficient in meat, and that livestock is one of the country's main sources of animal protein and of income and employment in the countryside. For millions of smallholders, keeping a few animals is both a store of savings and a cushion against hard times, which is why losses at the one big selling point of the year carry weight well beyond the farmgate.

Most of the year's sacrificial cattle are reared on small and medium farms and in rural households, often just a handful at a time, and fattened over many months for a single sale at Eid. In the weeks before the festival they are brought to the qurbani haats, the temporary and permanent cattle markets that spring up in cities and towns, the largest of them in Dhaka. Seasonal traders, known as beparis, buy animals from villages and from the north of the country and bring them to the big urban markets, hoping to sell within the few days the markets run.

In recent years the DLS has also promoted online, or digital, cattle markets, where animals are bought and sold on the basis of photographs and weights. But the bulk of the trade still happens face to face at the haats. Because the whole business is built around a short selling window of only a few days, selling on time is everything.

The temporary Eid haats are a business in their own right. In Dhaka the two city corporations lease out the right to run each market, and buyers pay a market toll, known as hasil, on every animal they buy, collected by the leaseholder. The cost of trucking animals into the city, feeding and watering them through the days of the market, and the hasil itself all ride on the hope of a quick sale. When animals go unsold, those costs fall on the traders and farmers on top of what they had already spent rearing the animal.

An animal that does not sell in those days cannot simply be kept cheaply: it has to be fed and cared for while it loses the very condition it was fattened to, and it has to compete in a market already crowded with other unsold animals. As the dairy farmers' association said, for a farmer who borrowed to feed cattle through a year when feed prices were at record highs, a single unsold animal can turn an expected profit into a deepening loss. That is why farmers described the leftover animals as a blow on top of a blow.

For many rural households, a sacrificial animal is a year's savings on four legs. A family buys a calf or a young bull, feeds it on straw, grass and bought concentrate for eight to twelve months, and the single sale at Eid is the return on all that outlay and labour. Because that return comes only once a year, and only within a few days, a year of careful rearing can be undone if the animal does not sell at the right price.

Alongside these households, a large number of commercial cattle-fattening and dairy farms have grown up over the past decade, many of them around Dhaka and in the north of the country. It is these farms, represented by bodies such as the Bangladesh Dairy and Fattening Farmers Association, that bear some of the sharpest losses when a well-fattened, higher-cost animal fails to sell, and whose leaders have pressed the government to treat the rise in feed and running costs as a serious problem.

Farm leaders used the aftermath of the festival to renew a long-standing appeal. The dairy and fattening farmers' association said the abnormal rise in the cost of feed, veterinary medicine and farm operation over recent years needed government attention, warning that repeated losses at Eid could discourage the very small and medium farmers who had built the country's self-sufficiency in sacrificial animals. With the DLS still collecting field data when the report was published, the full official account of how many animals were sacrificed, and how many were left on farmers' hands, was, the acting director general said, to be presented at a ministry press conference by the Thursday after the festival.

Photo: Wasiul Bahar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24; Department of Livestock Services (Livestock Economy at a Glance 2023-24); Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock; Dhaka Tribune.