Bangladesh economy is predominantly agrarian
which provides for more than 60% of the rural
employments and most of the diets to the country's
ever increasing population. Over the past two-anda
half decades food production in Bangladesh has
more than doubled, kept meaningful pace with the
population growth and placed the country's present
food (mostly cereal) situation within 'self-reliant to
surplus', which most of the governments tend to
avow due, mostly, to political reasons. This,
however, has not been easily achieved. Food
production activities in Bangladesh are mostly
based on small farm but tremendous population
pressure on land (920 people per sq. km), thus
ever shrinking land-man ratio (every day cultivable
land is lost @320 hectares due to urbanization,
infrastructural expansion, housing, land erosion,
increasing brick-field development etc), declining
soil fertility due to high cropping intensity and
imbalanced fertilization practice, high input-low
output farming and low market price of farm
produce.