Countrywide Food Survey
FAO, govt officials visit Ctg
A nine-member team comprising representatives from Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and different government departments visited Chittagong yesterday to see the present situation of Boro cultivation in the region.
The team that arrived here as part of a countrywide food situation survey held a meeting with different departments including agriculture, food, marketing and others at Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) Chittagong office in the morning.
FAO is assisting the survey to make a future plan for food security in the country.
Later they visited different unions under Anwara upazila to see Boro cultivation.
The team has already visited Dhaka, Jessore, Khulna, Bagherhat, Barisal, Madaripur and Comilla.
Four such teams are now visiting different parts of the country to cover all the 64 districts as they started the survey in middle of this month, DAE sources said.
The teams are collecting data on cultivation of different crops and vegetables including Aus, Aman and Boro paddy, wheat, maize and potato in 2007-2008 fiscal year, an AED official said.
Cheng Fang, an economist working for the FAO, said they are conducting a study on different factors like favourable weather and availability of water, fertiliser, seeds and cheap labour that might have contributed to this year's better Boro production compared to the previous years.
They were collecting data about the market prices including wholesale, retail and producers prices of major food commodities like paddy, wheat, flour, maize, poultry, meat and eggs, fish and vegetables in last three years, he said.
“We are talking with the farmers to double check the data given by the government departments as well as to get first hand information,” Cheng added.
Former Chairman of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) Dr Nurul Alam, Director (Research) of Ministry of Food and other officials were in the team.
DAE Chittagong Deputy Director Anisur Rahman, Additional Director Abul Kalam Azad, DAE District Training Officer Mustak Ahmad and District Marketing Officer of Food Department Md Imam Hossain were present at the meeting.
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