School of Farmers

Website: http://schooloffarmers.wikispaces.com/

Bangladesh is a low income developing country and now heading toward vision 2021 as
developing country. Bangladesh already gained lots of parameter to developing country
like MDGs goals and continue for SDGs goals. But it is sorrow that the contribution of
agriculture is now decreasing. According to the World Bank, in 2014 the contribution of
agriculture to GDP is 16.11% and in 2015, it was decreasing to 15.51% to GDP. On the
other hand, in the industrial sector the contribution of industry to GDP in 2014 27.61% to
in 2015 28.15. So it is alarming for future sustainable development Bangladesh as
Bangladesh is a developing agriculture based country and lots of people is related with
this field.

According to the economist W. Arthur Lewis theory of economic development1 (explains

the growth of a developing economy in terms of a labor transition between two sectors,
the capitalist sector and the subsistence sector), the dual economy (one is agriculture and
another is Industry) of Bangladesh is going well. But as Bangladesh is a developing
country, there is a problem that dual economic growth process could be stopped by the
Ricardo-Schultz food problem2 before reaching the development level.

As Bangladesh is large populated country, we need lots of food. If we face food problem,
we have to import lots of food. By this way we have to cost lots of money to buy food for
large amount of people. We lost our capital for investment and development will be
stumbled. This is the great problem for future Bangladesh. We need to emphasize to
develop the agriculture sector.

Secondly, in the agriculture sector, there are lots of problem that is barred our
development. Thats are:

Illiterate problem: if want to develop a country, we need to develop our

education. There is no alternative over education. Farmers are the agent of
development for any developing economy like Bangladesh. If they are illiterate, it

1
See details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-sector_model
2
See details: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1979/schultz-lecture.html

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 is not possible for government to develop the nation without this majority group.
School of Farmers literacy programme and rights training workshops provide
workers with the means to organize themselves and to improve their educational
and practical skills, both of which will equip them to better demand that their
rights to be respected.
Lack of adaptation of modern agriculture technology: Day by day technology
makes easy anything. Agriculture development is largely depend on it. So we need
to use this for future development. So we have to train our farmers to use this for
farming and future development.
Lack of farmers knowledge about market as they are lost their major profit: In
Bangladesh farmers do not aware about market. So they cut out the price for local
demand or syndicate and lost the major profit.
Lack of knowledge about financing, investment and banking as farmers do not
understand how to get credit from bank easily and make investment in field:
The knowledge of bank and investment is important for development. Most of the
farmers need credit for their business or agriculture. They have to understand the
financing and bank. So this problem deprived them to take big development
project.
Inequality among farmers as lack of women participation in farming (gender
discrimination): women participation is one of the important issue in nowadays.
There are lots of possible area where women are doing amazing job in agriculture
sector. So we have to concentrate women participation and rights in agriculture
sector so that development can be fulfilled.
Lack of knowledge in family planning and development among farmers family:
In Bangladesh perspective farmers family deprived from proper education,
health, nutrition, sanitation etc. so they need proper family planning knowledge
to better live.
It is very hard to implement any government policy to the illiterate farmers:
when farmers are illiterate, the government cannot implement any development
policy in our country. In the favor of government, it is impossible to handle the
large number of people. A practical example is: Mr. Kashem is a farmer. He do not
read or write. He harvested lot of lands with his own land. One day an agricultural
regional officer come to kahsem to know about leaf color chart method to reduce
the use of insecticides. But when he wanted to make understand to kashem did
not read the color name of the chart and officer was failed to learn the method. By
this Kashem waste lot of insecticides to the land and also land and environment is
in endangered for the over use of insecticides. The main reason of this event is lack
of basic education of farmers is hampered of long term national development
issue. So Kashem need enough education to conduct the sustainable development.

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 Environment pollution and climate change is happing because of
unconsciousness among farmers as farmers use over insecticides in field: Large
parts of environment is polluted by air, water and soil pollution. Farmers are used
over insecticides in field and environment is polluted.
Food poising as farmers do not understand the injurious about food poising
impact and lack of knowledge about natural freezing any product or related
issue: Peoples of Bangladesh are so anxious about their foods. Thus there are lots
of problem happing in health and peoples life is injurious. For big contribution
perspective, the farmers need to knowledge about natural agriculture system and
make a relationship with customer and farmers. When this relation raise
equilibrium position of supply and demand of two parties, we will get best result
for future Bangladesh.
Lack of understating about the importance of agriculture sector in Bangladesh. We
all are trying to industrial sector development. It is important for a country but if
we cannot develop both of industrial and agriculture development
simultaneously, we will face food problem for the large amount of population in
Bangladesh.

The main hindrance for Vision 2021 development plan for Bangladesh is sustainable
development. We have to develop per level of living development if we want to
develop the whole nation. So agriculture sector development is must towards vision
2021.

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