May 9, 2012

 

Bangladeshi's 2012 wheat production reaches record high

 

 

A new peak at 9.95 million tonnes has been reached by Bangladeshi wheat production this year due to favourable weather conditions, government statistics said.

 

The output of wheat, a major grain of Bangladesh, was 9.72 million tonnes last year.

 

Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) in its latest report on wheat said the cereal production this year is still well above the average of the last one decade.

 

Agriculturists said the country's wheat production grew mainly due to application of new technologies.

 

"Our area of cultivation has fallen  ... but production has increased due to use of new technologies and favourable weather conditions," said Mohammed Toufique, an analyst of the country's oldest think tank -- Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD).

 

The cultivation area of wheat was 0.358 million hectares this year against 0.374 million hectares last year.

 

Analysts said wheat production grew this year due to continuing strong prices in the local market. A record high yield was achieved each hectare this year, BBS statistics said.

 

Wheat production, mostly cultivated in northern parts of the country, on each hectare was 2.78 tonnes this year. The country's wheat import is expected to fall this year mainly due to good aman and boro harvest, importers said.

 

Importers said the rise in domestic wheat production will not have any impact on the import volumes as the demand for the cereal is rising each year.

 

"This is good news that our domestic production has increased but it will have very little impact on the total demand," said Abul Bashar, a leading wheat importer.

 

Bangladesh's domestic demand for wheat is nearly five million tonnes, nearly four million tonnes are met through imports. Wheat is not a traditional crop in the country and in the late 1980s little was consumed in rural areas.

 

In the first half of the 1980s, domestic wheat production rose to more than one million tonnes a year as the cultivation area was high. Wheat production is nearly 9-10% of total food grain production in the country.

 

Record production of wheat was nearly 1.5 million tonnes in 1985, but the following year saw a decrease of just over one million tonnes. The decline in wheat production began since late 1990s, sources at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BARI) said.

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