High volume, low value: Why Bangladesh’s crop structure fails its farmers

Bangladesh's agricultural success is usually described in terms of sufficiency. The country feeds itself, produces more than eight hundred lakh metric tonnes of crops each year, and has largely put the threat of famine behind it.

Yet beneath this apparent achievement lies a growing economic strain within farming. Medium and large landowners are steadily withdrawing from cultivation, marginal farmers remain locked into survival-level production, and tenancy has emerged as the dominant way land is farmed.

The contradiction is hard to ignore: a sector capable of producing enormous volumes of food is increasingly unable to support the people who grow it.

At the centre of this problem is a long-standing confusion between food security and farm profitability. Crop choices, policy incentives, and farmer behaviour continue to prioritise volume over value.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the overwhelming dominance of rice.

A closer look at production, yield, productivity, and pricing shows that while rice guarantees calories, it does so at the expense of rural incomes. The real question facing Bangladesh's agriculture today is not whether rice should be grown, but whether rice alone can sustain the livelihoods of those who cultivate it.

Rice: volume without value

Rice is often described as the backbone of Bangladesh's agriculture, and in terms of sheer output, that claim holds true.

It accounts for 47.1% of total crop production and 42.4% of agricultural income, spread across more than 116.5 lakh hectares of land.

At first glance, the balance between production and income seems reasonable. A closer look, however, reveals a deeper structural weakness: rice converts land, labour, and time into value inefficiently. Across all three growing seasons, yields remain modest and daily productivity is stubbornly low.

Aus rice yields 3.13 tonnes per hectare, with daily productivity of just 0.026 tonnes per hectare per day, selling at Tk35 per kilogram. Aman rice, the dominant monsoon crop, produces a similar yield of 3.14 tonnes per hectare, but daily productivity drops to 0.021 tonnes due to flooding and prolonged waterlogging.

Boro rice, the most input-heavy season, performs slightly better, yielding 3.85 tonnes per hectare with a daily productivity of 0.027 tonnes. This improvement is driven by irrigation and higher fertiliser use, and the crop sells at around Tk36 per kilogram.

Together, these figures underline a simple reality: despite its scale, rice generates relatively low income per unit of land.

Seasonality only reinforces this inefficiency. Boro rice depends on controlled irrigation, which has become increasingly expensive. Aman rice, meanwhile, is shaped almost entirely by the monsoon.

Large stretches of medium-low and low-lying land remain submerged for long periods, ruling out alternative crops. In such landscapes, Aman rice is grown not because it is profitable, but because it is the only viable option—yielding just one harvest a year with little room to raise incomes.

Aus rice, once more prominent, has steadily declined as farmers concentrate their efforts on Aman and Boro. The result is a system that maintains rice dominance while trapping farmers in a low-value cycle.

Cereal diversification and the pulse dilemma

Policymakers often promote "cereal diversification" as a way out of rice dependency, but the evidence offers limited reassurance.

Wheat, for example, yields 3.76 tonnes per hectare, with daily productivity of 0.031 tonnes and a market price of Tk28 per kilogram. Yet it contributes less than 1% of total agricultural income, making it economically marginal despite its agronomic promise.

Maize performs better in physical terms, yielding 9.27 tonnes per hectare and achieving daily productivity of 0.077 tonnes—nearly three times that of rice. Even so, its low price of Tk25 per kilogram limits income gains.

Maize remains a high-volume, low-value crop, useful for animal feed and crop rotation but incapable of closing the income gap on its own.

Pulses present a different challenge. They fetch a relatively high average price of Tk80 per kilogram, yet account for only 1.06% of agricultural income.

Low yields—averaging 1.41 tonnes per hectare—combined with sensitivity to rainfall and climate variability, restrict their expansion. Despite their nutritional importance and soil benefits, pulses struggle to support smallholder incomes in a context of debt, risk, and uncertain weather.

Horticulture: income beyond volume

The strongest evidence that income no longer depends on volume alone comes from horticulture.

Vegetables, in particular, expose the limits of rice-centric farming. They have the highest physical intensity of any crop group, yielding 15.78 tonnes per hectare with daily productivity of 0.175 tonnes.

Even at a moderate price of Tk30 per kilogram, vegetables generate 14.6% of total agricultural income—far more than their share of land or production. Short growing cycles and multiple harvests allow farmers to turn time into income far more effectively than cereals ever could.

Fruits tell a similar story. Assuming one harvest per year, they account for 6.75% of agricultural income from just 6.5% of total production. Average yields of 10.94 tonnes per hectare and prices around Tk40 per kilogram point to strong income potential.

Yet fruit cultivation demands upfront investment, patience, and secure land tenure. Returns are slow, and risks from floods and cyclones remain high.

For tenant farmers working plots of around 1.5 acres, such long-term investments are often out of reach, regardless of potential returns.

Spices demonstrate most clearly how value can outweigh volume. With average prices of Tk120 per kilogram, spices generate 12.8% of agricultural income while accounting for only 4.1% of production.

Even with moderate yields of 8.83 tonnes per hectare and daily productivity of 0.049 tonnes, the price advantage allows farmers to earn far more from far less land.

For smallholders, this difference can be decisive, underlining the importance of value-dense crops in sustaining rural livelihoods.

From crop choices to policy priorities

Taken together, these patterns challenge the assumption that expanding or replacing cereals alone will solve the income crisis. Bangladesh produces food in abundance; what it lacks is income generation within farming.

Rice remains essential for food security, especially in flood-prone Aman regions. But high output does not automatically translate into high returns. Vegetables and spices show that when productivity and price align, even small plots can generate meaningful income.

The barriers are mostly institutional, not agronomic. Rising irrigation costs, volatile fertiliser prices, limited access to quality seeds, weak credit systems, and exposure to floods and market shocks all push farmers towards the relative safety of rice.

Tenancy deepens these constraints by discouraging long-term investment and experimentation. As margins shrink, medium and large landowners step away from farming, while marginal farmers remain—often stuck in low-value crops simply to survive.

The policy challenge, then, is to help farmers shift towards higher-value crops without exposing them to unacceptable risks.

Rice must continue to underpin food security, but income security will require targeted support for vegetables, non-perishable crops such as spices, and carefully managed cash crops.

This means lowering production costs, stabilising prices, investing in storage and marketing infrastructure, and giving farmers a meaningful voice in crop planning.

Until such support systems are in place, farmers will continue to grow rice—not because it offers prosperity, but because it offers safety.

The future of Bangladesh's agriculture depends on closing the gap between feeding the nation and sustaining those who feed it, transforming high-volume production into farming that genuinely pays.

Sketch: TBS

Professor Dr Md Jafar Ullah is a former dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University in Dhaka. He can be reached at [email protected]

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.