16-01-2022

SUnDAy, jAnUARy 16, 2022
4
Acting Editor & Publisher : Jobaer Alam
e-mail: editor@thebangladeshtoday.com
Sunday, January 16, 2022
Diversifying traditional
agriculture
Traditional agriculture- centering mainly on the
production of food grains-has served a purpose, no
doubt, in feeding the growing population of
Bangladesh. But this singular emphasis on food grain
production is also costing dear the country in different ways.
It has created the necessity or urgency of crop diversification.
Mono cropping or production of only food grains in the
same land round the year causes loss of soil fertility.
However, such fertility loss can be avoided if rotation of crops
or planting different crops at different times on the same land
is practiced. Besides, the singular pursuit of food grain
production leads to under production of non food grain crops
and increases the country's import dependence of their
products.
For example, from an exporter of spices, Bangladesh
turned into a net importer of the same in the last decade as
farmlands progressively were used less and less for spice
cultivation. Oilseeds are imported or in their crushed form to
meet the needs of cooking oil. But once upon a time,
Bangladesh was self sufficient in producing oilseeds to meet
its entire consumption requirements.
Besides, there are important crops-such as cotton and
rubber-the cultivation of which can substantially reduce
import dependence. Experiments established that cotton of
the finest quality can be produced in Bangladesh. The soil of
this country is well suited for high grade cotton cultivation.
The country's main export commodity at present is readymade
garments (RMG). But value-addition in the RMG
sector at present is only about 30 to 35 per cent. But the same
can climb to 70 per cent or above, fairly soon, if only cotton in
increased quantities is locally produced to be used for making
yarn and fabric. In that case, foreign exchange earnings from
the RMG sector will also rise substantially. Extension of
rubber cultivation to the same end is also possible.
Similarly, stepped up production of oilseeds and spices can
lead to a substantial saving of foreign currency by much
reducing the import needs of these commodities. The
cumulative effect of the wider and successful production of
these non food grain crops will translate into vital balance of
payments support for the country by reducing imports and
increasing export values. Furthermore, production of these
within the country will also aid crucially in their price
stabilsation when the higher import costs of these are
tormenting the consumers .
Understandably, the demand of the country's huge
population for basic food creates the compulsion for using
lands very extensively for food grain production. But this
problem can be circumvented considerably by going for
higher yields of food grains from limited lands to set free
considerable lands for the cultivation of non food grain and
new crops. This strategy might ensure continued high
production of food grains while also freeing up farmlands for
planting the non food grain crops.
One study has found that improved or high yielding seeds
for food grains are being sowed in only 20 per cent of the
cultivated areas. If only the rate of application of improved or
higher yielding seeds can be increased to 50 or 60 per cent,
then production of food grains can more than double. In that
case, more than self sufficiency in food grains production can
be achieved that would also create conditions for using a
sizeable part of the farm lands for producing non food grain
crops.
It might also be assessed whether expanding acreage under
non food grain crops and achieving import substitution
means a greater saving of resources even if import of food
grains increase somewhat as more lands are devoted to the
non food grain crops. It is very likely that even increasing
food imports to some extent to release lands for the
cultivation of non food grain crops might effect a greater
saving of resources at some stage than the present scenario of
near self reliance in food but growing import dependence of
other agricultural products.
Then, there are other products to be derived from lands
which have much prospects namely baby corn, gherkin, cut
flowers, orchids and condiments. All of these and more can
be grown in the country especially with an eye for export.
Thus, these soil derived commodities can open up a rich new
field of export. However, to successfully diversify into these
areas of production, it will be necessary to build capacities at
all levels in respect of technology, standardisation,
infrastructural and institutional facilities right from the start
of production stages to export.
Government declared diversification of agriculture and
export of new agriculture oriented products as its thrust
policy some years ago. Venture capital and other forms of
patronization to this end were also declared. But evidences of
vigorous implementation of the policy or its notable bearing
of fruit, is not visible. If the policy has been slow in
implementation, then it needs serious investigations why it
is not creating the desired impact. After such an assessment
and identification of the bottlenecks, it can be recast with
emphasis amended or increased in different areas, as
required, and also increases in support activities accordingly.
Diversification of agriculture in support of the above
objectives is a pressing need indeed for the national
economy.
Rich Western countries stand by as Afghans face starvation
On January 11, the United Nations
emergency relief coordinator, Martin
Griffiths, appealed to the
international community to help raise
US$4.4 billion for Afghanistan in
humanitarian aid, calling this effort "the
largest ever appeal for a single country for
humanitarian assistance."
This amount is required "in the hope of
shoring up collapsing basic services there,"
said the UN. If this appeal is not met,
Griffiths said, then "next year [2023] we'll be
asking for $10 billion."
The figure of $10 billion is significant. A
few days after the Taliban took power in
Afghanistan in mid-August 2021, the US
government announced the seizure of $9.5
billion in Afghan assets that were being held
in the US banking system.
Under pressure from the US government,
the International Monetary Fund also
denied Afghanistan access to $455 million of
its share of special drawing rights, the
international reserve asset that the IMF
provides to its member countries to
supplement their original reserves.
These two figures, which constitute
Afghanistan's monetary reserves, amount to
around $10 billion, the exact number
Griffiths said the country would need if the
United Nations did not immediately get an
emergency disbursement for providing
humanitarian relief to Afghanistan.
A recent analysis by development
economist William Byrd for the US Institute
of Peace titled "How to Mitigate
Afghanistan's Economic and Humanitarian
Crises" noted that the crises being faced by
the country are a direct result of the cutoff of
$8 billion in annual aid to Afghanistan and
the freezing of $9.5 billion of the country's
"foreign-exchange reserves" by the United
States.
The analysis further noted that the
sanctions relief given by the US Treasury
Department and the United Nations
Security Council on December 22 to provide
humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan
should also be extended to "private business
and commercial transactions."
Byrd also mentioned the need to find ways
to pay salaries of health workers, teachers
and other essential service providers to
prevent an economic collapse in
Afghanistan and suggested using "a
combination of Afghan revenues and aid
funding" for this purpose.
Meanwhile, the idea of paying salaries
directly to the teachers came up early last
month in a meeting between the UN's
special envoy for Afghanistan, Deborah
Lyons, and Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister
Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai.
None of these proposals, however, seem to
have been taken seriously in Washington.
A humanitarian crisis
In July 2020, before the Covid-19
pandemic hit the country hard, and long
before the Taliban returned to power in
Kabul, the Ministry of Economy in
Afghanistan said 90% of the people in the
country lived below the international
poverty line of $2 a day.
Meanwhile, since the beginning of its war
in Afghanistan in 2001, the US government
has spent $2.313 trillion on its war efforts,
according to figures provided by the Watson
Institute for International and Public Affairs
at Brown University in Providence, Rhode
Island; but despite spending 20 years in the
Afghan war, the US government spent only
$145 billion on the reconstruction of the
country's institutions, according to its own
estimates.
Last August, before the Taliban defeated
the US military forces, the US government's
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan
Reconstruction (SIGAR) published an
important report that assessed the money
spent by the US on the country's
development. The authors of the report
wrote that despite some modest gains,
"progress has been elusive and the prospects
for sustaining this progress are dubious."
The report pointed to the lack of
development of a coherent strategy by the
US government, excessive reliance on
foreign aid, and pervasive corruption inside
the US contracting process as some of the
reasons that eventually led to a "troubled
reconstruction effort" in Afghanistan. This
resulted in an enormous waste of resources
for the Afghans, who desperately needed
these resources to rebuild their country,
which had been destroyed by years of war.
On December 1, 2021, the United Nations
vijAy PRAShAD
Development Program (UNDP) released a
vital report on the devastating situation in
Afghanistan.
In the last decade of the US occupation,
the annual per capita income in Afghanistan
fell from $650 in 2012 to around $500 in
2020 and is expected to drop to $350 in
2022 if the population increases at the same
pace as it has in the recent past, the report
said. The country's gross domestic product
will contract by 20% in 2022, followed by a
The report pointed to the lack of development of a
coherent strategy by the US government, excessive
reliance on foreign aid, and pervasive corruption inside
the US contracting process as some of the reasons that
eventually led to a "troubled reconstruction effort" in
Afghanistan. This resulted in an enormous waste of
resources for the Afghans, who desperately needed
these resources to rebuild their country, which had
been destroyed by years of war.
30% drop in the following years.
The following sentences from the UNDP
report are worth quoting in full to
understand the extent of humanitarian
crisis being faced by the people in the
country:
"According to recent estimates, only 5% of
the population has enough to eat, while the
number of those facing acute hunger is now
estimated to have … reached a record 23
million. Almost 14 million children are likely
to face crisis or emergency levels of food
insecurity this winter, with 3.5 million
children under the age of five expected to
suffer from acute malnutrition, and 1 million
children risk dying from hunger and low
temperatures."
lifelines
This unraveling humanitarian crisis in
Afghanistan is the reason for the January 11
appeal to the international community by
the UN.
On December 18, 2021, the Council of
Foreign Ministers of the Organization of
Islamic Cooperation (OIC) held an
emergency meeting, called for by Saudi
Arabia, on Afghanistan in Islamabad,
Pakistan. Outside the meeting room, which
merely produced a statement, the various
foreign ministers met with Afghanistan's
interim foreign minister, Amir Khan
Muttaqi.
While in Islamabad, Muttaqi met with US
Special Representative for Afghanistan
Thomas West. A senior official with the US
delegation told Kamran Yousaf of The
Express Tribune (Pakistan), "We have
worked quietly to enable cash … [to come
into] the country in larger and larger
denominations."
A foreign minister at the OIC meeting told
me that the OIC states are already working
quietly to send humanitarian aid to
Afghanistan.
Four days later, on December 22, the
United States introduced a resolution (2615)
in the UN Security Council that urged a
"humanitarian exception" to the harsh
sanctions against Afghanistan.
During the meeting, which lasted about
40 minutes, nobody raised the matter that
the US, which had proposed the resolution,
had decided to freeze the $10 billion that
belonged to Afghanistan. Nonetheless, the
passage of this resolution was widely
celebrated, since everyone understands the
gravity of Afghanistan's crisis.
Meanwhile, Zhang Jun, China's
permanent representative to the UN, raised
problems relating to the far-reaching effects
of such sanctions and urged the UNSC to
"guide the Taliban to consolidate interim
structures, enabling them to maintain
security and stability, and to promote
reconstruction and recovery."
A senior member of the Afghan central
bank, Da Afghanistan Bank, told me that
much-needed resources are expected to
enter the country as part of humanitarian
aid being provided by Afghanistan's
neighbors, particularly from China, Iran and
Pakistan (aid from India will come through
Iran).
Aid has also come in from other
neighboring countries, such as Uzbekistan,
which sent 3,700 tons of food, fuel and
winter clothes, and Turkmenistan, which
sent fuel and food.
Early this month, Muttaqi traveled to
Tehran to meet with Iranian Foreign
Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and
Iran's special representative for
Afghanistan, Hassan Kazemi Qomi. While
Iran has not recognized the Taliban regime
as the official government of Afghanistan, it
has been in close contact with Kabul "to help
the deprived people of Afghanistan to
reduce their suffering." Muttaqi has,
meanwhile, emphasized that his
government wants to engage the major
powers over the future of Afghanistan.
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian,
editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow
and chief correspondent at Globetrotter
US needs more Asians to avoid demographic death
Now that Elon Musk has tweeted that
"population collapse is potentially the
greatest risk to the future of
civilization," it must be true. America's total
fertility rate fell in 2020 to only 1.67 births
per female, the lowest in history, and well
below the replacement level of 2.1.
Ten years ago, when I published How
Civilizations Die, the United States still
made babies at the replacement rate, though
(as I noted) this depended on high fertility
among two groups of Americans:
Evangelical Christians and Hispanics.
Now demographic winter has descended
on America, and there is no obvious path to
recovery. The only medium-term solution
lies in the immigration of skilled adults, and
the only two prospective sources of largescale
immigration of skilled adults are China
and India.
Civilizations die because they want to.
Nations that live for the present and eschew
a vision of their future do not take the
trouble to raise children. Today's
demographic decline has precedents in the
hollowing-out of Hellenistic Greece after the
Alexandrian conquests, and the decline of
Rome several centuries later.
In the modern era, religious commitment
has been the strongest predictor of the
desire to bring future generations into the
world; other writers, notably the British
demographer Eric Kaufmann, have made
parallel arguments.
What demographers call the great fertility
transition occurred with urbanization and
the end of child labor. In agricultural
societies and early modern industry,
children were cheap labor and considered
(as in wrongful death lawsuits) a resource
with a definable monetary value.
Once national pension systems replaced
family care for the aged, and children no
longer were expected to work until early
adulthood, children offered spiritual rather
than monetary value.
Now we have another 10 years' worth of
data, and they bear out my 2011 thesis: the
decline in American fertility tracks (and in
fact is predicted by) the decline in religious
commitment among Americans. This has
deep implications for public policy. If
religious faith is the most important
determinant of fertility, public policy can
have only a modest impact on birth rates.
The annual Gallup survey on American
attitudes towards religion includes the
question: "How important would you say
religion is in your own life - very important,
fairly important, or not very important?"
As shown in the above chart, the US Total
Fertility Rate tracks the percentage who
answered "very important" closely. The link
between fertility and faith passes all the tests
for statistical robustness.
Where data are available, we observe a
close relationship between religious
commitment and fertility. In a May 2021
survey, the Pew Institute reported:
"Orthodox Jewish adults report having an
average of 3.3 children, while non-Orthodox
Jews have an average of 1.4 children.
Orthodox Jews also are five years younger,
on average, when they give birth to their first
child (23.6 vs 28.6 among non-Orthodox
Jews)."
Data for American Christians are less
clear-cut. Samuel Perry and Cyrus Schleifer
of the University of Oklahoma reported in
2020 that fertility fell to 2.3 children in 2016
from 2.7 children in 1972. The rate of church
attendance had a small positive correlation
with fertility, they concluded, but the fertility
of conservative Protestants declined
regardless of the rate of church attendance.
Arguably, other factors drove American
fertility down. Immigration (including
illegal) from Latin America dropped off
sharply after the 2008 financial crisis, and
Hispanics were disproportionate
contributors to fertility.
The Hispanic birth rate dropped from
97.4 births per 1,000 women in 2007 to 65.3
births per 1,000 women in 2019, a faster
rate of decline than among the non-
Hispanic population. That may have to do
with economic factors, but it could also
reflect the assimilation of Hispanics into
mainstream American culture. We do not
have enough evidence to judge.
Why has religious commitment declined?
Part of the blame may lie with religious
leadership.
The Gallup data for American confidence
DAviD P. GolDmAn
in organized religion show a fall by about
half since 1973 in the proportion of
respondents who have "quite a lot" or "a
great deal" of confidence in religious
institutions.
Remarkably, the decline in religious
commitment is overwhelmingly a
Protestant phenomenon, according to the
Gallup data. Since the early 1950s, the
proportion of Americans who identify as
Catholic has remained in the mid-20%
range, while the proportion of Protestants
has collapsed by about half.
The first option is desirable but likely to have a small effect. The second
and third options are inseparable. Reversing the long-term decline of labor
productivity requires the reconstruction of America's depleted manufacturing
sector, and that in return requires a much larger number of engineers
than American universities presently produce.
The percentage who identify with no
religion rose from around zero in the early
1950s to 20% in 2020. Catholic numbers, to
be sure, are supported by immigration from
mainly Catholic countries.
The fall in religious affiliation is mainly a
Protestant phenomenon, but the decline in
fertility is similar across denominations.
Sociologist David Ayers, in a July 2021 study
for Crisis magazine, concluded "in the
United States, the facts show sharp drops in
fertility among Catholic women overall, and
among those who have ever been married,
similar to what we find among Americans as
a whole."
The great wave of secularization came to
America, the country "with the spirit of a
church," somewhat later than it did to the
rest of the industrial world and had the same
impact on fertility. Secular trends of this
kind are difficult to reverse (but not
impossible: Russia's total fertility rate rose
from a 1999 low of 1.16 to an estimated 1.83
in 2020).
Among the high-income countries only
Israel, with a total fertility rate (TFR) just
over 3 - almost double its peer nation
average - has a fertility rate above
replacement. Excluding the highly religious
Haredi portion of the Israeli population, the
fertility rate is still 2.6, far higher than the
rest of the industrial world.
Israel is the exception that proves the rule.
By Western standards, Israel is the most
religious among the high-income nations.
Up to 98% of Jewish Israelis "always" place
a mezuzah (a small box containing handwritten
Bible verses) on their door, 92%
circumcise their male children, 70%
maintain Jewish dietary laws at home, 70%
fast on Yom Kippur and 78% take part in a
Passover Seder, according to one survey.
A Jew's decision to live in Israel with all
the attendant risks and obligations
(including universal military service) by
itself implies a high degree of faith even
among the professedly secular.
Germany has an extremely low fertility
rate but has had considerable success in
attracting skilled or semi-skilled
immigrants. As of 2018, 4.8 million citizens
of other European Union countries had
moved to Germany, almost 10% of the
country's 49 million citizens of working age
(20 to 64 years old).
But this trend cannot continue for long
because the fertility rate of the countries that
sent migrants to Germany (Poland,
Romania, Italy, Spain and so forth) is even
lower than Germany's.
Germany's demographic profile appears
dire, but it has postponed the inevitable
aging crisis through skilled immigration.
Italy's situation seems hopeless; its
population is aging faster than its peers and
it is losing skilled working-age adults rather
than importing them.
Immigrants to Italy come overwhelmingly
from Africa and the Middle East and cannot
replace the diminishing number of
productive adults.
The position of the United States is
somewhat better than the high-income
country average for projected old-age
dependency (China's much-discussed
demographic problem is about the same as
the high-income average). But the United
States is headed in the same direction as
Germany and China.
What should the United States do about
this? Declining fertility is a cultural and
confessional phenomenon and not directly
susceptible to government initiatives. There
are only three options open to public policy:
Encourage a higher fertility rate through
economic incentives; Attempt to reverse the
long-term decline in productivity growth to
allow a smaller base of taxpayers to support
a larger proportion of retirees.
Source : Asian Times