WHEN the stomach is full, everything feels under control. But the idea of hunger can be so painful that the renowned 20th-century Bengali poet Sukanta Bhattacharya once compared the bright full moon to nothing more than a loaf of chapati in an empty stomach. Eating is perhaps one of the most fundamental human rituals, something which we celebrate several times a day, every day of the year, from birth until the grave. But while 180 million people in Bangladesh are consuming at least 360 million meals per day, can the state truly guarantee that its citizens are eating safe, properly balanced, and nutritious diets? Probably not.
Over the past few months, I conducted a small survey, periodically collecting the retail prices of grocery items, vegetables, fish, meat, and other essentials. I found that a minimum of 16,000 to 17,000 taka per month is required to sustain a five-member family, even when considering the cheapest available fish, meat, and vegetables. In contrast, the highest salary grade for a worker in the garments industry is 15,035 taka per month (Sarbojonkotha, Vol. 11, No. 3, May鈥揓uly 2025). Not every labourer earns at this top grade, and not all industries enforce legally binding salary structures for their workers. It is clear, therefore, that a significant portion of the population is not adequately fed, let alone receiving a balanced or nutritious diet.
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What are we growing in our field?
IF ANYONE takes a walk through any bustling lane of a local kacha market in Bangladesh, they are likely to see the same repeated sight: shiny brinjals, uniform-sized bottle gourds, cucumbers, ridge gourds, and radishes; mechanically polished and artificially whitened rice; unnaturally thick yellow bananas; overly red, glossy tomatoes and so on. These are the products of our very own fields.
But Mother Nature doesn鈥檛 care about perfect length, bright skin colour, or glossy finishing. Nature prioritises nutrition, diversity, and balance. Moreover, it doesn鈥檛 produce food exclusively for humans; it produces systematically for all: microorganisms, insects, cattle, and the entire ecosystem.
Take traditional rice varieties as a simple example. They usually grow taller and are more flood-resilient, with nutrition distributed between grain and straw. Humans consume the grain, while the straw provides natural fodder for cattle. But 鈥渕odern鈥� agricultural trends now favour hybrid rice varieties. These are engineered to divert maximum plant nutrition into the grain, resulting in dwarf plants with less nutritious straw. As a result, farmers can no longer rely on rice straw alone to feed livestock. To compensate, they are increasingly dependent on purchased cattle feed, often mixed with chemical additives, steroid-based growth hormones, antibiotics, and artificial milk boosters 鈥� many of which carry risks for both animal and human health.
For generations, farmers were the guardians of agricultural diversity. Through their knowledge and care, our indigenous rice varieties flourished, reaching an astonishing 18,000 types once cultivated in our own soil. Yet today, we have lost nearly 10,000 of these varieties, simply because we chose to trust multi-billion-dollar seed marketers more than the wisdom of our farmers (BBC Bangla, 8 October 2020). We valued short-term profit over long-term protection, and in doing so, we turned food into a mere commodity.
Agriculture has now become more of a business than a way of life, driven by a reductionist and mechanistic philosophy that treats soil as a factory, seeds as machines, fertiliser as fuel, and farmers as disposable labour. Dying insects and microorganisms are dismissed as mere collateral damage.
While a handful of global corporations destroy biodiversity and rob us of our future, the state has been reduced to a silent puppet which is channelling thousands of crores in subsidies and budgetary support to these companies under the guise of subsidy and agricultural development assistance.
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How are things growing in our field?
ACCORDING to the latest report available on the Department of Agricultural Extension website, a total of 6.5 million metric tonnes of chemical fertilisers, including urea, TSP (Triple Super Phosphate), MOP (Muriate of Potash), and other fertilisers, were distributed and used in 2023鈥�24. Just about 15 years ago, in 2009-10, this amount was 3 million metric tonnes. In 2023 alone, 39,000 metric tonnes of pesticides and herbicides were imported. These substances are all alien to the soil, human body, ecology, and environment. They are marketed through lucrative advertisements that encourage the extraction of every last nutrient from each square inch of soil in pursuit of ever-higher yields. This corporate-driven, profit-hungry model of food production is so one-dimensional that it treats every form of natural co-production and ecological co-creation as a threat. When it produces grain, it eliminates pulses; when it grows fruits, it removes wildflowers; when it cultivates vegetables, it suppresses weeds that are essential for maintaining soil biodiversity.
But our traditional farmers knew that pulses are more effective nitrogen fixers than synthetic fertilisers. They understood that certain pests harmful to one crop can serve as food or regulators in the larger ecological cycle. Yet, this generation鈥檚 deep indigenous knowledge had no place in a profit-orientated market system. Over time, farmers were reduced to a mere labour force, seen as uneducated and inefficient, while thousands of agricultural graduates, government officials, bureaucrats, and politicians were transformed into company agents, dealers, and brokers. Their job has become to persuade farmers to adopt industrial inputs, from seeds to machinery.
It all starts with seeds. Modern hybrid or genetically engineered seeds are designed in such a way that saved seeds from one season often fail to perform in the next. Once farmers are dependent on these seeds, they are forced to buy specific fertilisers and pesticides tailored to the seed鈥檚 genetic requirements and vulnerabilities. These seeds come embedded with a formula that ensures dependence on external inputs.
This energy-intensive and capital-intensive model only appears profitable when calculated in terms of yield per acre. But this narrow metric ignores the hidden costs: excessive water use, soil degradation, and what can only be described as ecological genocide 鈥� the mass destruction of soil microbes, aquatic life, and biodiversity through chemical runoff into rivers, canals, and water networks.
Company agents and dealers are trained to promote 鈥榶ield per acre鈥� as the sole success indicator. But it鈥檚 time we create a pro-people counter-discourse. We must start asking: what is the nutrition per acre of this production model? What is the loss of biodiversity per unit of marketed product? These are the real questions that need to be answered if we are to reclaim our food systems for the people, benefit our farmers, and stop fattening the seed, fertiliser, and pesticide industries.
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How is our farmer?
THE beginning of farming marked a turning point in human civilisation. Once farmers began producing in abundance, social and economic wealth started to grow 鈥� laying the foundation for advancements in medicine, infrastructure, art, culture, and beyond. Farmers were the original architects of societal and financial development and remain the backbone of our economic stability.
However, in Bangladesh, farmers have been reduced to mere statistics, largely excluded from politics, policymaking, and the lives of the middle and upper classes. They feed the entire nation, yet they are deprived of proper healthcare, housing, and education. Farming no longer guarantees that a farmer can even feed their own family. That鈥檚 why, in Dhaka city today; one in every four rickshaw pullers is doing this work because he couldn鈥檛 sustain his life on his farmland back in the village. (Mahmud, S. M. S., & Hoque, M. S. (2012).听Farming has become financially insecure and physically exhausting. Farmers must arrange capital for seeds, fertilisers, and pesticides, even though the price of the production remains always volatile.听 The energy required per unit of production has reached new heights, which farmers often try to compensate for by increasing manual labour, often at the cost of their health and well-being. As a result, one study shows that more than 60% of cancer patients in Bangladesh are farmers (BBC Bangla, 4 February, 2021). 听听
Aren鈥檛 the most destitute, impoverished, and helpless faces in our society those of farmers? Shouldn鈥檛 transforming farming into a safe, secure, and dignified profession be a central issue in our politics? How can we remain under a collective illusion and expect to enjoy safe and nutritious food while the very people producing it are dying from the physical, financial, and ecological toll of farming? Has the issue of safe and sustainable agriculture even entered our reform agendas following the July uprising? Will political parties commit to placing farmers鈥� rights and ecologically balanced agricultural practices at the centre of their election manifestos? These may be difficult questions, but they are necessary ones.
Our collective inaction has allowed billion-dollar seed, fertiliser, and food corporations to gain control over our land, water, and air in pursuit of profit. We made the mistake of believing that the market would provide all the solutions, that the 鈥渋nvisible hand鈥� would fix everything. But markets are not designed to solve our problems; rather, they exploit them. That is why agribusiness has become increasingly profitable, while farmers are falling deeper into debt and consumers are being left with increasingly unsafe and less nutritious food.
If anyone still believes that profit-driven market mechanisms work in favour of public interest, let us reflect: Where did the hundreds of thousands of local cold-pressed mustard oil producers go 鈥� who just a few decades ago met nearly all of our domestic edible oil demand? Today, we are almost entirely dependent on imported palm and soybean oil. Is this imported edible oil truly healthier than our own mustard oil, sesame oil, etc., which was once widely valued for its nutritional and medicinal benefits?
Our farmers are not to be brainwashed by corporate propaganda. They are wise, self-taught, and deeply caring. For generations, they have been the guardians of our seeds, and throughout our history of development, we have been safely held in their hands.
So let鈥檚 listen to our farmers; let鈥檚 listen to the ones who can listen to the soil. Let鈥檚 give ourselves the chance to restore our land, our water, and our air before the so-called invisible hand makes us all hostages and leaves us bankrupt.
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Mowdud Rahman is a researcher and writer. The writer is indebted to Bratto Amin, a passionate thinker and farmer, for the insightful discussion on the farming situation in Bangladesh.
