16 Agriculture and food security

Chapter 16 of 60 in the Bangladesh 2036 research base. Contents of the series.

Rice grows about 2 percent a year on a diesel and groundwater machine, and the diet, not the harvest, is the decade's food security problem

Bangladesh enters the FY26 to FY36 scenario window with a food economy that is statistically self-sufficient in rice and structurally dependent on everything else. The country produced 40.70 million tonnes of rice in FY24 [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, key statistics table] while importing essentially all of its edible oil and most of its wheat, and the mechanism that produced the rice record, a boro season that delivers 51.8 percent of output on this chapter's arithmetic on the season series [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, key statistics table], runs on groundwater, diesel and subsidised fertiliser that the fiscal and aquifer accounts can no longer treat as free. The claim this chapter defends is twofold. First, rice is a slow climb, not a plateau and not a boom: from the FY19 base of 36.39 million tonnes [BBS Agri 2024] to the FY24 print of 40.70 million tonnes the country added 11.8 percent in five years, 2.3 percent a year compound, a pace that keeps ahead of population but leaves no margin for a failed aman. Second, food security in 2036, under any of the chapter 15 scenarios, is a price question more than a production question: the cost of a healthy diet reached 160.36 BDT per person per day in the 2025 estimate [FAO 2026], and 38.6 percent of the population, 67.8 million people, could not afford it [FAO 2026]. The decade to FY36, the horizon the chapter 15 scenarios assume, will be decided not by whether rice crosses 43 million tonnes but by whether the cost of producing it, in a fertiliser subsidy of 16,500 crore BDT in FY25 [MoF Subsidy 2025], in groundwater drawn against the aquifer's recharge, and in the climate channels chapter 11 measures, stays inside what the budget and the delta can carry.

The record: a slow rice climb on an irrigated dry season, an import pipeline for everything else, and a diet that still prices out two in five people

The production record is five years of small positive increments. Total rice output moved from 36.39 million tonnes in FY19 to 36.60 in FY20 and 37.61 in FY21 on the stored panel [BBS Agri 2024], then 38.14 in FY22, 39.10 in FY23 and 40.70 million tonnes in FY24 on the 2024 yearbook [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, key statistics table]. The year on year increments were 0.6, 2.7, 1.4, 2.5 and 4.1 percent. FY24 was the best of the five and it was an aman story: aman rose 8.0 percent to 16.66 million tonnes, boro 1.4 percent to 21.07 million and aus 2.5 percent to 2.97 million [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, key statistics table]. Boro, the dry season crop grown almost entirely under irrigation, is 51.8 percent of FY24 output on this chapter's arithmetic and occupies 12,052 thousand acres against a net cropped area of 19,829 thousand acres in FY23, the latest print, down from the 19,875 thousand acres of FY22 that chapter 14 carries [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, land utilization table]. Rice is 87.1 percent of the 46.75 million tonne cereal basket by weight, with wheat at 1.17 million and maize at 4.88 million tonnes [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, key statistics table], a concentration that makes the rice line the food security line.

The boro machine's water claim is measured in aggregate and unmeasured at the source that matters. Irrigated area reached 21,530 thousand acres in FY23 from 19,629 thousand acres in FY21, 1,901 thousand acres or 9.7 percent in two years [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, land utilization table], and chapter 28 assigns the withdrawal record to this chapter because irrigation and the drinking water of nine households in ten draw on the same alluvial aquifer. The instrument census gives the shape of the claim: of 1,725,435 irrigation instruments counted for FY24, 1,513,197 or 87.7 percent are deep or shallow tube wells drawing groundwater, and 1,228,085 or 71.2 percent run on diesel, including 1,043,041 of the 1,479,157 shallow tube wells [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, irrigation instrument table, source BADC]. What is not stored is the share of boro irrigation water by volume drawn from groundwater rather than surface sources, the BBS agricultural structure tables being the resolving source, so any groundwater volume share figure could not be confirmed. What is measured is the quality shadow of that abstraction: the stored survey puts mean groundwater arsenic at 90.02 parts per billion with 39.09 percent of sampled points above the national 50 parts per billion standard [Harvard Dataverse 2020, DOI 10.7910/DVN/JPYWDD], a reading inherited from chapter 28's water account.

The sector behind the harvest grows below the economy around it and employs above its weight. Agriculture grew 3.37 percent in FY23 and stayed inside a 3.05 to 3.54 percent band across FY18 to FY23 [BBS NA 2024], against national growth of 5.78 percent in FY23 and 4.22 in FY24 on the World Bank series chapter 01 carries [WB WDI 2026]. Agriculture's share of GDP fell from 13.14 percent in FY18 to 11.30 in FY23 [BBS NA 2024] while the sector held 44.7 percent of employment in 2024 [ILO 2025], the reversal chapter 08 documents. A sector employing 44.7 percent of workers to produce 11.3 percent of value runs a four to one productivity gap, and every chapter 15 scenario that assumes poverty keeps falling assumes the gap narrows through workers leaving farms, not through farm growth alone.

The import dependence is concentrated in exactly the items the diet cannot do without, and the quantities are storable. Rice imports fell from 2.64 million tonnes, worth 1.02 billion USD, in calendar 2021 to 0.20 million tonnes, worth 0.10 billion USD, in 2024 [BACI 2024, HS 1006]. Wheat imports ran at 6.98 million tonnes in 2021 and 2.96 million tonnes in 2024, worth 1.92 and 0.69 billion USD [BACI 2024, HS 1001]; against the 1.17 million tonne FY24 crop, imports were 2.5 times domestic production, so on a supply basis roughly 72 percent of the wheat the market absorbed was imported, chapter arithmetic on the two series with stock change ignored. Edible oil is a near total import dependency: palm oil imports ran between 1.42 and 1.63 million tonnes a year across 2021 to 2024 and soybean oil between 0.65 and 0.80 million tonnes, together 2.10 million tonnes in 2024 [BACI 2024, HS 1511, HS 1507], against domestic oilseed production of 1.26 million tonnes in FY24 [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, key statistics table]. The price of that pipeline is on the record: the BBS import unit price index for edible oil reached 520.53 in 2023 on the 2002-03 base of 100, wheat 478.70 and fertiliser 1,167.76 [BBS Agri 2024], the fertiliser index a more than tenfold rise that is the import side of the inflation regime chapter 05 measures.

The diet outcome is the record the harvest is supposed to serve, and it divides into two problems. The quantity problem is easing: prevalence of undernourishment fell from 10.9 percent in 2020 to 8.2 percent in the 2025 estimate [FAO 2026], and cereals, roots and tubers supplied 72 percent of dietary energy at the 2023 reading [FAO 2026]. The quality and price problem is not: moderate or severe food insecurity ran at 28.0 percent of the population in the 2025 FAO estimate [FAO 2026] against the 21.11 percent the BBS Household Income and Expenditure Survey module of 2022 measured on its own definitions [BBS HIES 2022], and healthy diet unaffordability, 38.6 percent in the 2025 estimate [FAO 2026], has fallen from 51.6 percent in 2020 but still prices out 67.8 million people [FAO 2026]. Protein is the one diversification that worked without imports: fish production reached 4.62 million tonnes in FY21, of which inland aquaculture 2.64 million tonnes, 57.1 percent, and hilsa 0.57 million [DoF 2021].

Mechanism: the boro machine, the world price pipe, and a diversification record that is real for oilseeds, onion and maize and absent for pulses and vegetables

Three mechanisms carried the record, and each is at a turning point. The first is the boro machine. Aman waits on the monsoon and aus on the pre-monsoon, but boro is engineered: dry season irrigation, fertiliser and varieties bred for yield, on an irrigated base that grew by 1.9 million acres between FY21 and FY23 [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, land utilization table]. The machine's paid inputs are the subsidy and the pump. The fertiliser subsidy ran 7,100 crore BDT in FY21, 8,800 in FY22, 14,200 in FY23, a peak of 24,500 in FY24 and 16,500 in FY25, which is 97 percent of the 17,000 crore total agricultural subsidy of FY25, the seed subsidy having been flat at 160 crore throughout [MoF Subsidy 2025]. The pump runs on diesel at a retail price of 120.75 BDT per litre in December 2025 [HDX WFP 2026], a cost that moves with every exchange rate adjustment chapter 05 documents. The aquifer is the input the budget does not pay for, and its quality shadow is the arsenic reading above [Harvard Dataverse 2020, DOI 10.7910/DVN/JPYWDD].

The second mechanism is the world price pass-through of 2022, which the import price indices date precisely and the household surveys now date on the way down. The fertiliser import price index rose from 434.66 in 2021 to 1,167.76 in 2023 on the 2002-03 base, edible oil from 311.52 to 520.53, wheat from 267.92 to 478.70 [BBS Agri 2024]. The pass-through landed in food inflation of 8.71 percent in FY23 [BBS CPI 2023] and in the March 2024 monthly print of 9.87 percent [BBS CPI 2024]; the stored monthly panels end there, so the official food prints for FY24 as a year, FY25 and FY26 could not be confirmed, the BBS monthly release being the resolving source. Two stored series that do run past the gap both show the shock easing. The FAO DIEM monitoring rounds put the share of surveyed households reporting a food price income shock at 48.84 percent in April 2024 and 27.12 percent in August 2025, and the fuel price shock at 8.81 and 2.53 percent in the same rounds [FAO 2026]. WFP retail monitoring puts coarse rice at 49.98 BDT per kilogram in April 2026 against 48.28 in January 2024, essentially flat in nominal taka across the period [HDX WFP 2026]. The state's own answer to the input side, the subsidy surge to 24,500 crore in FY24 [MoF Subsidy 2025], socialised the shock onto the budget, and the May 2024 float let the taka absorb the external price at the cost of the roughly 43 percent depreciation since the end of 2021 that chapter 05 records [BIS 2026]. A country that imports its edible oil and most of its wheat cannot run food policy independent of the exchange rate, the fact chapter 59 reads from the basket end.

The third mechanism is diversification, and on a single vintage of the crop tables it is narrower than the standard story on either side. Across FY22 to FY24 on the 2024 yearbook, oilseed production rose 21.7 percent to 1.26 million tonnes, onion 15.9 percent to 2.92 million and maize 14.4 percent to 4.88 million, all faster than the 6.7 percent rise in rice, while potato rose 4.5 percent to 10.60 million tonnes, pulses were flat at 0.43 million, down 0.7 percent, vegetables fell 7.8 percent to 5.54 million and temporary sugar crops fell 5.0 percent to 2.93 million tonnes [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, key statistics table]. The record is therefore asymmetric twice over: the crops that displace imports at the margin, oilseeds and maize for feed, are moving, while the crops the healthy diet needs most, pulses and vegetables, are not, and the subsidy, the irrigation expansion and the credit system stayed pointed at rice throughout. Producer prices show why farmers stay with rice: at the December 2023 readings rice paddy brought 30,324 BDT per tonne against maize at 29,421, near parity that preserves the rice acreage, while potato at 45,693 and lentils at 91,397 BDT per tonne price the volatility risk that scares smallholders off the higher value crops [FAO 2026]. The seed system is the quiet constraint on the high value side: the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation supplied 160,403 tonnes of rice seed in FY21 against 16,819 tonnes of wheat seed [BADC 2021], and the private and imported seed share that would show whether the system is modernising could not be confirmed, the BADC annual reports being the resolving source. Credit is the second constraint, and it is thin by any measure: Bangladesh Krishi Bank, the state agricultural bank, disbursed 14,358.83 crore BDT in FY23 [BKB 2023], the Bangladesh Rural Development Board 1,644.58 crore in the same year [BRDB 2023], and the banking system's advances to agriculture stood at 0.71 trillion BDT of a 14.46 trillion BDT book, 4.9 percent, in December 2023 [BB Econ 2024]. The FY26 development budget adds 10,795.97 crore BDT for agriculture across 125 projects, 4.69 percent of the 230,000.00 crore BDT programme the National Economic Council approved on 18 May 2025 [Planning Commission ADP 2025, ADP at a glance table], the share chapter 04 shows being crowded by transport and power.

The decade ahead: four decisions decide whether the climb continues without breaking the budget or the aquifer

Four forces set the FY36 frame the chapter 15 scenarios price. The yield ceiling: the FY19 to FY24 record shows increments of 0.6 to 4.1 percent a year with the best year an aman year, and no stored national projection quantifies the rice yield frontier, so any specific 2036 output figure is not established, with FAO and BBS projection scenarios the named authors whose numbers would resolve it. The climate channels chapter 11 measures: riverine flooding covered 37,925 square kilometres, 25.7 percent of the country, in 2023, the third consecutive year above a quarter of the territory [BWDB 2023], coastal salinity pushes land out of rice, and heat lands on aman and boro yields through the reanalysis record; the World Bank Country Climate and Development Report's specific yield loss range for Bangladesh could not be confirmed, the published report being the resolving source [WB CCDR 2022]. The fiscal arithmetic: a fertiliser subsidy that spiked to 24,500 crore in FY24 [MoF Subsidy 2025] cannot compound at the exchange rate's pace inside a state collecting 7.64 percent of GDP in tax in FY21, the latest World Bank print [WB WDI 2026], so cost reflective input prices with targeted compensation is the decade's farm budget question chapter 04 frames. The diet transition: undernourishment at 8.2 percent [FAO 2026] beside 38.6 percent diet unaffordability [FAO 2026] means the marginal food security gain now comes from income growth chapter 01's scenarios price, diet diversity that fish, pulses and vegetables carry, and food inflation that chapter 59 measures line by line.

The decision points, in order of leverage. The input pricing decision, whether fertiliser and diesel track cost with targeted compensation, decides whether the subsidy stabilises near 16,500 crore or re-spikes with the next world price cycle [MoF Subsidy 2025]; the DIEM rounds already register the withdrawal, with the share of crop producers reporting fertiliser access difficulties rising from 9.69 percent in December 2024 to 15.63 percent in August 2025 as the subsidy came down from its peak [FAO 2026]. The irrigation decision, surface versus groundwater for boro, is jointly owned with chapter 28's delta accounts. The procurement and trade decision, when to import rice and at what tariff, decides whether a bad aman becomes a price spike; the fall to 0.20 million tonnes of rice imports in 2024 [BACI 2024, HS 1006] shows the buffer working in a good year, which is the easy case. The diversification decision, whether pulses, vegetables, oilseeds and maize get the seed, credit and price machinery rice gets, decides whether the 87.1 percent cereal concentration [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, key statistics table] softens across the decade the chapter 15 scenarios cover.

Three risks print in monthly series and the upside is already visible in the crop tables

Risks. First, a groundwater break: boro at 51.8 percent of output and 21.53 million irrigated acres [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, land utilization table] are a claim on the aquifer whose volume split could not be confirmed, and the revealing indicators are the depth to water and dry season pump hours in the BBS agricultural structure tables; a falling trend forces the irrigation decision this chapter frames. Second, a subsidy and inflation spiral: if world fertiliser and fuel prices spike while the taka weakens, the 24,500 crore peak of FY24 [MoF Subsidy 2025] becomes the base case, and the revealing indicators are the fertiliser budget line against the 1,167.76 import price index peak [BBS Agri 2024] and the DIEM fertiliser difficulty share, already moving up from 9.69 to 15.63 percent across the subsidy withdrawal [FAO 2026]. Third, a diet price regime: if food inflation re-enters double digits while agricultural wage growth runs below it, the March 2024 pairing of 8.19 percent wage index growth in agriculture against 9.87 percent food inflation [BBS Wage 2024] [BBS CPI 2024] becomes the regime rather than the episode, diet unaffordability reverses its fall from 51.6 percent [FAO 2026], and the acute tail widens, which is what the IPC projection of 18.0 percent of the analysed population in crisis levels or worse for September 2026 already signals [IPC 2026].

Upside. First, the aquaculture dividend: fish production at 4.62 million tonnes, 57.1 percent of it farmed [DoF 2021], is the one protein expansion with a stored growth record, and its continuation is worth more to diet diversity than any rice increment. Second, a formalised input market: the digital payment rails chapter 13 documents make targeted input support administrable at lower cost than blanket subsidy, and the fall in fuel price shock reports from 8.81 to 2.53 percent while prices were passed through [FAO 2026] shows pass-through is survivable when it is credible. Third, the non-rice compounding where it exists: oilseeds, onion and maize all outran rice across FY22 to FY24 [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, key statistics table]; if the seed, credit and price asymmetries close for pulses and vegetables too, the diet's diversification has a production base already moving.

What to watch: five indicators whose thresholds mark the regime

1. Total rice production. Current value 40.70 million tonnes in FY24 [BBS Agri 2024, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024, key statistics table]. Threshold: a fall below 39 million tonnes, the FY23 level, in two consecutive fiscal years marks the self-sufficiency regime ending; a sustained print above 43 marks the frontier extending rather than a good aman repeating.
2. Fertiliser subsidy. Current value 16,500 crore BDT in FY25, 97 percent of the agricultural subsidy total [MoF Subsidy 2025]. Threshold: a return above 25,000 crore marks the subsidy and inflation spiral; stabilisation below 15,000 crore with cost reflective pricing marks the reform, confirmed on the field side by the DIEM fertiliser difficulty share moving down from 15.63 percent [FAO 2026].
3. Food inflation. Current value 8.71 percent in FY23, the stored annual record, and 9.87 percent in March 2024, the stored monthly record [BBS CPI 2023] [BBS CPI 2024]. Threshold: a sustained print below 6 percent marks the food regime normalising; a return above 10 percent marks the diet price regime chapter 59 fears.
4. Healthy diet unaffordability. Current value 38.6 percent, 67.8 million people, in the 2025 estimate, down from 51.6 percent in 2020 [FAO 2026]. Threshold: a fall below 30 percent marks the purchasing power turn; a rise back above 45 percent marks the nutrition emergency regime.
5. Acute food insecurity, IPC phase 3 or above. Current value 15.0 percent of the 99.21 million analysed population in the May 2026 analysis, with 18.0 percent, 18.14 million people including 0.79 million in emergency level, projected for September 2026 [IPC 2026]. Threshold: a projection above 20 percent marks the acute regime chapter 34's safety net would have to answer; a fall below 10 percent marks the normalisation that would validate the diet trend.

Sources used

[BBS Agri 2024] Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics 2024 (published December 2024, accessed 6 September 2026): key statistics table (area and production of major crops, FY22 to FY24), land utilization and irrigation table (FY21 to FY23), irrigation instrument table for FY24 (source BADC); plus the stored series via bdpolicy.db and lake/agriculture: bbs_crops_annual_panel (rice total FY19 to FY21), bbs_tot_import_price_edible_oil, bbs_tot_import_price_wheat, bbs_tot_import_price_fertilizer. [BBS NA 2024] Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics national accounts via bdpolicy.db, series: bbs_gdp_growth_agriculture_pct, bbs_gdp_share_agriculture_pct. [BBS CPI 2023] Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics CPI via bdpolicy.db, series: bbs_inflation_national_food, annual panel. [BBS CPI 2024] Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics CPI via bdpolicy.db, series: bbs_inflation_national_food, monthly panel to March 2024. [BBS HIES 2022] Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2022 via bdpolicy.db, series: bbs_hies_food_insecurity_mod_sev. [BBS Wage 2024] Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics Wage Rate Index via bdpolicy.db, series: bbs_wri_growth_national_agriculture, March 2024 growth. [MoF Subsidy 2025] Finance Division agricultural subsidy allocations via the bdfacts_sector snapshot in bdpolicy.db, series: bdfacts_agri_subsidy_fertilizer_bdt_crore, bdfacts_agri_subsidy_total_bdt_crore, bdfacts_agri_subsidy_seed_bdt_crore; year labels are the fiscal year ending in the snapshot's calendar date. [Planning Commission ADP 2025] Annual Development Programme 2025-2026, Programming Division, Bangladesh Planning Commission, June 2025, ADP at a glance sector table: agriculture 10,795.97 crore BDT across 125 projects, 4.69 percent of the 230,000.00 crore programme approved by the National Economic Council on 18 May 2025, https://adp.plancomm.gov.bd/book/2025-2026-ADP-BOOK.pdf, accessed 6 September 2026. The lake series adp_agriculture_cr_bdt (10,368.71) belongs to the FY2023-24 programme book and is not used. [FAO 2026] Food and Agriculture Organization series via bdpolicy.db: food security (fao_undernourishment_prevalence_pct, fao_mod_severe_food_insecurity_pct, fao_diet_unaffordability_pct, fao_diet_unaffordability_pop, fao_diet_cost_bdt_per_day, fao_cereal_energy_share_pct), DIEM monitoring rounds (fao_diem_income_shock_food_prices_pct, fao_diem_income_shock_fuel_prices_pct, fao_diem_crop_fertilizer_diff_pct), producer prices (fao_producer_price_rice_bdt_tonne, fao_producer_price_maize_bdt_tonne, fao_producer_price_potatoes_bdt_tonne, fao_producer_price_lentils_bdt_tonne). [BACI 2024] CEPII bilateral trade at HS6 via the trade/bd_hs6_trade parquet, series: bd_hs6_trade, HS 1006 rice, HS 1001 wheat, HS 1511 palm oil, HS 1507 soybean oil, values in thousand USD and quantities in tonnes, summed to HS4 by calendar year. [BKB 2023] Bangladesh Krishi Bank agricultural credit via the MoF SOE evaluation tables in bdpolicy.db, series: bkb_agri_credit_disbursement_crore. [BRDB 2023] Bangladesh Rural Development Board agricultural credit via bdpolicy.db, series: brdb_agri_credit_disbursement_lakh. [BB Econ 2024] Bangladesh Bank Monthly Economic Trends via bdpolicy.db, series: bb_bank_advances_agriculture, bb_bank_advances_total. [ILO 2025] ILOSTAT modelled estimates via the labor/ilo parquets, series: ilo_emp_temp_sex_eco_nb_a. [WB WDI 2026] World Bank World Development Indicators via hdx/wb_combined.csv, series: wb_gdp_growth (NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG, year label equals the fiscal year ending in that year), GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS. [BIS 2026] Bank for International Settlements USD/BDT series via bdpolicy.db, series: bis_usd_bdt_monthly_eop. [HDX WFP 2026] WFP food and fuel price monitoring via bdpolicy.db, series: wfp_price_diesel_bdt_l, wfp_price_rice_coarse_bdt_kg. [DoF 2021] Department of Fisheries production series via bdpolicy.db, series: dof_fish_total_production, dof_fish_inland_culture_production, dof_hilsa_production. [BADC 2021] Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation seed supply via bdpolicy.db, series: badc_rice_seed_supply, badc_wheat_seed_supply. [BWDB 2023] Bangladesh Water Development Board historical flood record via bdpolicy.db, series: bwdb_flood_affected_area_sq_km, bwdb_flood_affected_pct. [Harvard Dataverse 2020] Groundwater arsenic survey, mean concentration and guideline exceedance shares, DOI 10.7910/DVN/JPYWDD, via bdpolicy.db series tox_groundwater_arsenic_*. [IPC 2026] Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, acute food insecurity analysis via HDX tables in bdpolicy.db, series: ipc_food_sec_phase3plus_share_pct, ipc_food_sec_phase3plus_pop, ipc_food_sec_phase4_emergency_pop, ipc_food_sec_analysed_pop_total, May 2026 current and September 2026 projection. [WB CCDR 2022] World Bank Country Climate and Development Report, Bangladesh, resolving source for yield-loss figures that could not be confirmed.

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Verified line by line against primary sources: 118 claims checked, 26 corrected.

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