Bangladesh's farm land has been decreasing at the rate of 0.19 per cent every year, the Agriculture Census-2019 report says on Tuesday.
According to the census conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the country's net arable land has declined to 18.68 million acres in 2019 from 19.09 million in 2008.
The BBS published the report of the Agriculture Census-2019 on Tuesday in Dhaka while the last census was conducted in 2008.
According to the census, although the total agricultural households (HH) have increased, the agricultural labour households have decreased to 9.2 million.
The agricultural households have risen to 16.88 million in 2019 from 15.18 million in the previous census of 2008.
The agricultural labour households have increased to 9.2 million in 2019 from 8.84 million in 2008, the census of 2019 shows.
Bangladesh's total number of agricultural households have reached 35.55 million in 2019 from 28.69 million in 2008.
Meanwhile, the country's total non-arable land has increased to 0.24 million in 2019 from 0.15 million in 2008. The country's crop production has been increasing year-on-year amid the falling rate of farm land as the crop intensification in the same land within a year had been boosted.
The BBS' latest data shows that the crop intensification in the farm land has risen to 214 per cent in 2019 from 173 per cent in 2008.
It means, the same farm land in Bangladesh could produce crops 2.14 times in 2019 instead of 1.73 times in 2008 on an average.
Bangladesh's total number of cows in the agricultural households have reached 29.45 million, chicks 1.99 billion, ducks 74.49 million, buffalos 0.63 million and goats 19.44 million, the latest census showed.
Meanwhile, the 2019 agri census shows that Aman rice farmland has increased to 11.97 million acres from 9.36 million acres in 2008.
The Aus rice farming land has decreased to 2.46 million acres in 2019 from 2.55 million in 2008.
The Boro rice farmland has increased to 11.06 million in 2019 from 10.11 million in 2008.
Planning Minister MA Mannan speaking at the launching ceremony of the census report directed the BBS to work out the way of conducting the Population & HH Census, and the Economic Survey in every two years. The agriculture census should be conducted in every year to know about the real development of Bangladesh, the minister said.
He also asked the BBS to get all the data of the livestock and fisheries including the commercial productions instead of currently produced HH data only for representing the real picture of the country's agriculture.
