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Last modified on Wednesday, 06 March 2013 18:00

Bangladesh’s agriculture industry needs farmer-friendly machineries: Matia Chowdhury

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07 March 2013, Dhaka. Agriculture minister Matia Chowdhury on Thursday called on the scientists and manufacturers to produce farm equipments that are useful for Bangladesh’s small and medium scale farmers.

Addressing a workshop on the use of industrial machineries in crop production and processing in Bangladesh, held at BRAC’s head office on 7 March 2013, the Honorable Minister said machineries for managing large farms are unlikely to find market in Bangladesh, because the overwhelming majority of farmers are operating at small or medium scale. “You cannot compel farmers to use any machinery unless they find it truly useful,” she said.

BRAC and the Planning Commission of Bangladesh jointly organised this workshop as part of a two-day event titled ‘Asian Regional Workshop on Rural mechanisation’. The inauguration session was chaired by the governor of Bangladesh Bank, Dr Atiur Rahman, with the agriculture minister attending as the special guest.

In his chair’s address, Dr Atiur Rahman said that in the last four years the country’s foreign reserve increased from USD 6 billion to USD 14 billion. “The credit must go to the farmer community. It is because of their hard work that the production increased, and we did not have to import rice.”

Dr MA Sattar Mandal, member of the Agriculture, Water Resources and Rural Institution Division of the Planning Commission, presented a keynote paper titled ‘Rural Mechanisation: Status and Issues in Bangladesh’ at the inauguration.  He chaired other sessions of the workshop along with Dr Shamsul Alam, member of GED of Planning Division and Dr Rafiqul Islam, director-general of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute. Professor Scott Justice of CIMMYT, Akhter Ahmed of IFRI, as well as BRAC’s executive director Mahbub Hossain and its  research division’s director WMH Jaim also spoke at the workshop.
 

 

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