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The potato glut

The demand for potato is universal. With the growth of agro-based and agroprocessing industries and change in people's food habits our domestic market will expand rapidly. Potato is a good substitute for cereals. There is a limitation on rapid growth of production of cereals due to diversion of our cultivable land to more profitable items like vegetables, fruits, flowers etc. loss of fertility of land due to intensive cultivation, urbanisation and frequent natural disasters.

A.B.M.S. Zahur
ONE of the major differences between a developed and a developing country is that a developed country's planners and administrators can think of a possible impact of a policy decision more or less correctly, while a developing country's planners and administrators cannot think of the impact fully ahead of policy implementation because of various deficiencies.
Due to weakness in our planning our potato growers are now facing problems concerning storage, and are not getting the right price for their product (due to glut in the market) even though they toiled hard to recover their losses from repeated floods in 2007. We have heard that moderate success has been achieved --an export commitment of only 2000 tons of potato. On the other hand, no satisfactory arrangement could be made so far for storage.
The problems arising out of bumper production of vegetables are not new in Bangladesh. We are already severely burdened with price hikes of some essential items due to increase in international prices of these items. Though we are exporting potatoes in small quantities to some countries in the Middle East, Malaysia and some EU countries, we could not reach the desired level due to inadequate attention given by the governments in the past.
We have fairly big markets in the Middle East, UK, USA, South Korea and Malaysia. The Bangladeshi workers in those countries may like to have vegetables from Bangladesh because of sentiment, and the taste of the items.
Though some progress has been made during the last few years, it may not be enough. Our involvement in an export promotion project, jointly financed by the World Bank and GOB, revealed a few problems — lack of space to carry perishable items like vegetables, lack of grading of vegetables, too much dependency on commercial exporters, and (d) very few exporters.
The demand for potato is universal With the growth of agrobased and agro-processing industries and change in people’s food habits our domestic market will expand rapidly Potato is a good substitute for cereals. There is a limitation on rapid growth of production of cereals due to diversion of our cultivable land to more profitable items like vegetables, fruits, flowers etc. loss of fertility of land due to intensive cultivation, urbanisation and frequent natural disasters.
If wc have to keep the interest of the farmers alive in growing vegetables wc shall have to assure them of more or less stable demand, and offer them better transport facilities and proper inputs at the right time.
Exporting a commodity from a least developed country like Bangladesh is no mean business. Only the coordinated and con-
certed efforts of the ministries of agriculture, commerce, industries, roads and communication and finance can develop it. Our workers abroad may be advised to invest more in agro-based and agro-processing industries to generate employment and to increase foreign exchange earning. In fact, agro-based and agro-processing industries are occupying the number one position in the list of thrust sectors of the Industrial Policy of 2005.
As an immediate measure, the CTG may consider holding discussions with cold storage owners and potato exporters to find new markets for potato. In addition, the ministries of food, agriculture and commerce should monitor the trend of domestic consumption of potato. The government may even make an appeal to the people to consume more potatoes and less rice, and explain to them the objectives of the appeal.
It is time that Bangladeshis realise that they should be careful about consumption of rice, because they may face a worse situation because they are living in a disaster-prone country. Even with the capacity for cash purchase it will be difficult to procure rice because almost ail major rice producers are building food reserves.
What is needed is encouraging production of potato and bringing stability In its demand. Among the measures which may be considered by the CI G arc:
• Identifying areas considered most suitable for production of
potato;
• Acquiring the right transportation for export of vegetables;
• Close monitoring by the ministry of agriculture for attending to the problems of growers;
• ncreasing the capacity of cold storages quickly — by converting unutilised warehouses of BADC into cold storages, if possible;
• Allocating more funds to agricultural research institutes to upgrade their research activities.
In considering the measures to be taken the critical points to be considered are: population is increasing and cultivable land decreasing and due to intensive cultivation, fertility of land is decreasing. In addition, natural disasters are visiting us more frequently due climatic change, rice growers are diverting their interest to more cost-effective crops.
Some experts recommend substitution of rice by potato to maintain food security, thereby decreasing rice consumption and, thus, its price. Potato consumption is mostly out of domestic production. If we ask the poor people to consume more potato its price has to be kept stable. The most critical points about potato are -- it has more nutritional contents, is lower in price, and may be cooked in different ways, and Bangladesh is already facing serious problem in increasing production of food grains, particularly due to loss of zinc in the soil, and vegetables are less susceptible to zinc deficiency.
The government need not worry about the temporary problems of storage and lower price of potato, because the price of coarse rice is not likely to fall quickly and the storage problem is not too difficult to overcome. In fact, the potato glut may prove a boon for Bangladesh.
AB MS. Za^rur is a former joint secretary