Bangladesh has become the third largest food importer by dealing inbound shipment of 100 million tons of food products from the world market in 2021, according to the latest report of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
FAO of United Nations released the statistics on World Food and Agriculture-2023 recently.
Bangladesh produced around 93.3 million tons of agricultural products in 2021 while the country imported about 100 million tons of food products. Of which wheat, edible oil and milk powder still account for the largest share of food import expenditure.
Bangladesh is ranked among the top 10 countries in the world in the production of 22 agricultural products, according to FAO. It includes products like rice, lentils, potatoes, onions, tea, as well as different types of fruits.
Citing high prices of import-dependent food products in Bangladesh, FAO says, per capita consumption of nutritious foods such as cooking oil, meat and milk is the lowest.
“People of these countries eat less than most of the countries in the world. However, the people of the country are in a good position in terms of per capita consumption of food products such as rice, vegetables, fish and fruits produced in the country. People of Bangladesh are moving towards per capita food energy or calorie consumption,” added the report.
Agriculture Minister Muhammad Abdur Razzaque said that the government has taken initiatives to increase the production of import-dependent agricultural products.
“New varieties of edible oil, onions and pulses are being introduced and farmers are being given incentives to increase production. We hope that Bangladesh's import dependence on these agricultural products will decrease,” he said.
In terms of per capita consumption of domestically produced food products such as rice, vegetables, fish and fruits, the people of the country are in a good position. In other words, in this case, the people of Bangladesh are moving towards per capita calorie consumption.
In the FAO report, the position of Bangladesh in the export of food products is at the bottom. Bangladesh ranks third among the world's food importing countries.
“China is the top importer followed by Philippines in second place. And the top five countries in the world in terms of food exports are USA, UK, Germany, China and France respectively. In this regard, the position of Bangladesh is at the very end,” added the report.
FAO has given an account of how much food Bangladesh exports. The account is quite disappointing. Bangladesh exported food products worth 9 lakh 75 thousand dollars in 2022. Of course, half of it is frozen fish. Which includes shrimp and marine fish.
Apart from this, fruits and vegetables, food grains like rice and maize, meat, edible oil, ghee, honey and dairy products are exported. However, most of these products are exported to expatriate Bangladeshi buyers. These products are not exported much to the international market or multinational companies.
According to the FAO report, Bangladesh's dependence on food imports from the world market is increasing. In 2010, while Bangladesh imported 9.3 percent of its total food demand, it increased to 11.2 percent in 2022.
Imports of rice, wheat and edible oil are continuously increasing during this period. However, due to the dollar crisis, rice has not been imported this year compared to last year. Imports of wheat also fell by about 30 percent compared to normal.
Along with increasing the production of nutritious food, we need to increase the habit of eating such food. It is possible to obtain nutrition at low cost from locally produced foods. For this, it is necessary to reduce the dependence on imported nutritious food and increase the consumption of native vegetables and fish.
The report shows the per capita consumption of food energy in all the countries of the world including Bangladesh. On average, every person in the world consumes 2 thousand 978 calories or food energy per day.
In Asia it is an average of 2 thousand 931 calories. Per capita food energy consumption of Bangladesh is 2 thousand 614 calories. 1 thousand 288 calories of the total food energy of Bangladesh comes from rice and wheat or grain food.
Then there are 203 calories from edible oil, 83 from sugar, 94 from fruit and 175 from potatoes. Bangladesh consumes only 20 calories from meat, 55 calories from milk and eggs, 40 calories from soft drinks and 52 calories from fish.
Bangladesh is ranked among the top 10 countries in the world in the production of 22 agricultural products, according to FAO report.
The report includes products like rice, lentils, potatoes, onions, tea, as well as different types of fruits. In the last decade, Bangladesh has been added to the top list in the production of some products such as pumpkin, cauliflower and homogeneous vegetables.
BDST: 1855 HRS, DEC 23, 2023
MN/SMS
