Water savings in rice cultivation
Liton Rahman / Driknews
The Principle Scientific Officer of the Rice Research Institute, Gazipur, published an article on the subject in an English daily on 18 December. This is a valuable and interesting information on water usage for rice farming. His work needs to be appreciated and recognised by the authorities for its potential of savings in the cost of rice production! However the cost benefit of the projected savings by lowering water usage needs to be carefully and as far as possible accurately worked out. The pay off is between the cost savings for less water usage as against the extra cost of importing rice to replace the production shortfall which is projected at one and two percent of rice output per hector for two different types of water usage and the different quantities of water needed for each type of irrigation. This exercise needs to be carefully and fairly accurately projected for the cost benefit calculation to establish a realistic basis. Provision has to be made for normal cost inflation parameters, as well as the future trend of foreign exchange fluctuation of taka vis-a-vis US dollar or the Euro, as well as the financial differences if the shortfall in rice output is compensated by equivalent import of rice or wheat. This detailed study is a must. It is an important and necessary corollary to the author's water saving proposal; which cannot be viewed in isolation, being a multi-discipline study. This will need quality input and forecasting of factors involving rice farming techniques and its future trend, water supply and its usage and related projected costs of water needed for rice cultivation, and the economic issues and exchange futures to arrive at the cost of imported equivalent quantities of rice or wheat! Such a detailed study on the above guidelines is a matter of national importance; as rice growing determines the very life and livelihood of Bangladesh! The BIRRI should carry out this study, jointly in collaboration with our other universities who can give important inputs on water supply for irrigation and the price and cost of input projection and exchange ratios forecast over an accepted period. In my opinion this important techno-economic study to set the needed benchmarks of costs and benefits needs to be identified in the national interest, before the idea is spread and implemented across the country.
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