Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
in the PFDS. The optimal stock level determined by the World Bank in 1979
was 1.2 million tons; IFPRI determined it as 0.8 million tons in 1991 (Goletti,
Ahmed, and Chowdhury 1991). It should, however, be distinctly understood
that the optimal stock level is not a static concept. The optimal level has its ebbs
and flows, depending on the amounts of off-take, in-country production, food
aid, and internal procurement by the government. The issue here is not so much
the diminishing importance of the PFDS, leading eventually to its disappear-
ance. The issue is one of meeting the changing development goals centering on
poverty alleviation, food security, and related issues.
In this context, it will be useful to refer to the perceptions of policy-
makers relating to the future of the PFDS. The National Food Policy, 2001 draft
(Ministry of Food 2001) underscores the importance of emergency distribution
from public stock during and following natural calamities, effective imple-
mentation of targeted food-based programs, nondistortionary grain-market in-
tervention for price stabilization, and price incentives for domestic food pro-
duction, including consumer price support. It is clear from the Ministry of Food
(2001) public statement that, despite substantial gains from food policy re-
forms in the past decade, the government is not ready to further undertake PFDS
reforms. For example, the government continues to maintain a public grain stock
of 1 million tons, although recent studies (Ahmed et al. 2003) recommended
decreasing the stock to 800 thousand tons.
Addressing Income Seasonality
The vulnerability to income seasonality in Bangladesh and elsewhere in devel-
oping countries is an old subject. The manifestation of such vulnerability through
the interlocking of product, labor, and capital markets received substantial at-
tention in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the context of commercialization of
agriculture (for earlier reviews of the issue, see Bhadhuri 1977, 1983). Some
studies highlighted those issues in the context of market reforms and structural
adjustments program, which, the authors argued, would not change such ex-
change relationships in technologically backward areas (Crow, Murshid, and
Rashid 1991; Crow and Murshid 1994).
Over the years academic interests in the subject have faded, but the real-
ity remains more or less the same. Agricultural seasonality still causes the bor-
derline nonpoor to slip into transient poverty and the poor to endure further dep-
rivation and hardships. Local newspapers still publish reports highlighting
such vulnerability. In a recent article, a daily newspaper reported that poor in
the poor northern districts of the country sell their labor in advance (termed
Dadon
) in the September-October lean season under exploitative terms. The
loan conditions require borrowers to work on lenders' fields at the time of
aman
harvest in November-December, at preset wage rates, which are as low as one-
third to one-half the market wage rates that normally prevail during the har-
vesting months (Kibria, Hogue, and Chowdhury 2003).
