Bangladesh’s booming farm production is coming at a hidden cost of health risks, environmental damage, and long-term threats to future generations, warns eminent economist Prof Anu Muhammad.
The country’s farm sector now projects “an aura of development”—record harvests, expanding markets, and visible state support—while masking the long-term costs borne by farmers, consumers, and future generations, he said.
“If this path continues, we will become unhealthy, and the next generation will be unhealthy as well,” he said.
Prof Muhammad made the remarks today at a press briefing on safe agriculture and food systems at the National Press Club in Dhaka.
He described rural Bangladesh as a landscape of intense and often unplanned activity, where crop fields, fish enclosures, and brick kilns now exist side by side.
Local markets, he said, are flooded with fertilisers, pesticides, and machinery, many of which are subsidised by the state and promoted as essential tools of modern agriculture.
“These inputs are receiving government sympathy and support, but ordinary people and even farmers do not know how the policies behind them are formulated,” Muhammad said.
“Most of these policies are written in English, not Bangla, and international development partners such as the World Bank, IMF, UNDP, and USAID play a major role behind them,” he added.
Tracing the roots of the current system to the Green Revolution of the 1960s, he said successive governments—regardless of political affiliation—have continued to formulate and implement the same policy framework.
While official figures show that food production has increased more than fourfold, with major gains in fish and vegetable output, the professor said these achievements are celebrated without examining their broader consequences.
“We see headlines about record production and feel impressed. But at the same time, we hear about farmers committing suicide or dying from disease. These two realities are never brought together,” he said.
There is little institutional interest or funding to assess the true cost of production growth. As a result, rising output has coincided with toxic water, depleted groundwater, degraded soil, and food contamination caused by excessive chemical use, according to Muhammad.
Citing research, he said farmers make up a disproportionately high share of cancer patients, describing this as a direct outcome of prolonged exposure to pesticides and other agrochemicals.
“Farmers are the primary victims under this development model,” he said, adding that the impact will eventually reach non-farmers as well.
He also pointed to emerging health trends that show a rise in non-communicable diseases among people over 40, despite Bangladesh’s success in reducing childhood infectious diseases.
“Heart disease, kidney failure, liver disease, and neurological disorders are increasingly linked to environmental factors,” he said.
“These illnesses reduce productivity and shorten life expectancy. If life expectancy were calculated accurately, the figures would likely fall,” he said, noting that many people now face major health shocks in middle age.
He criticised universities and research institutions for failing to question the dominant development model, saying research has prioritised rapid production over indigenous seeds, water conservation, and biodiversity.
With an election approaching, Muhammad said political parties were unlikely to rethink the model on their own, calling instead for a fundamental shift in agricultural thinking driven by public pressure and collective action.
At the event, Pavel Partha, spokesperson of the new platform “Safe Agriculture and Food Movement,” placed 20-point demands, including stopping the use of dangerous pesticides, ensuring minimum wages, and launching a pension for farmers.
“We hope the political parties and candidates who are participating in the upcoming national election will address our demands in their respective manifestos,” he said.
