About five to seven thousand years ago, primitive people began to gradually master agriculture as a profession. It is a revolutionary event in the history of mankind. Primitive agriculture has gradually transformed into mechanized agriculture today into different pathways. Once the words agriculture is much known familiar to all over the world, but today's it has many rename; namely primitive agriculture, subsistence agriculture, precision agriculture, mechanized agriculture, robotic agriculture, regenerative agriculture with the demand and time. A major reason for Bangladesh's large population since ancient times is its agriculture-friendly climate. The history of cultivation of palm, dates, betel nut, coconut, mustard, rye, karpus, kalai, mung has been recorded since the mining period.
Paddy, banana, karpus are many ancient crops of this country. From the Arya period to the British era, Karpus was cultivated in Bangladesh from house to house, yarn was spun from house to house, weavers wove cloth to meet the needs of the country, world famous muslin cloth and other cotton cloths were exported to Europe .Bangladeshi cloth was banned in England as Manchester cloth could not play with Bangladeshi cloth. During the British period, karpus cultivation was banned in this country and transferred to America and our farmers were forced to cultivate indigo this was the bad history of our agriculture.
Cotton is the world favorite natural fiber known as 'white gold'. Cotton is intertwined with tradition, history, civilization, economy, livelihood and it is our second basic need, from birth to death we need all the garments made of cotton. We can live for a while without food, but we can't live without cotton and cotton cloth for a single moment. Cotton is a safety net for the least-developed and developing countries. It's a major source of income and livelihood for many rural laborers and smallholders. While occupying 2.1% of the world's arable land, cotton meets 27% of the world's textile needs, and almost nothing from the product is wasted.
Bangladesh cotton occupies only 0.52 percent of land in Kharif 2 seasons and meet 12.5% of our national demand. The growth trend of cotton industry revealed that there is great scope to increase local cotton production without hamper of food production and thereby save the foreign exchange from cotton import.. Each ton of seed provides employment for an average 5 people per day throughout the year. The cotton lint from one 227kg bale can produce 215 pairs of denim jeans, 250 single bed sheets, 750 shirts, 1,200 t-shirts, 3,000 nappies, 4,300 pairs of socks, 680,000 cotton balls, or 2,100 pairs of boxer shorts.
Cotton is considered a drought tolerant crop as the plant require very minimum water (700-1200mm depending upon climate and growing season) as well as it has vertical tap root which provides resilience against drought and it has compensatory growth ability due to that cotton responds to loss of fruiting parts (buds, flowers, bolls).Cotton cultivation has positive impact on soil health, it improve soil fertility, reduce soil erosion and added organic matter by leaves. Due to climate change, un-wanted rain, flooding is our common phenomena; every year lots of field crops in under water-logging condition and its affect our national economy. Cotton can survive in short-term water logging condition through escape strategy, quiescent adaption strategy and self-regulatory compensation mechanism.
We have a bitter experience in 2008, having money but we could not imported any food grains like that in 2011 cotton prices became very high and it was tough to us imported cotton from abroad, so we should need to increase our national capacity. Now we have a New Building namely "Tula Bhaban" in the centre of the city at Khamarbari area. CDB has good reputation in the agriculture sector of the country and so far developed and released some promising cotton varieties including Hybrids, mutants; HYV, BT and muslin and more than 50 technologies. We have also Jute, Mesta and many other sources of natural fibers; we can work together for betterment of natural fibers. Price subsidy to cotton farmers like India, and boost up research and extension supports, and mega-project and public-private partnership can contribute more cotton expansion in our country which may help economic growth, employment generation and livelihood improvement in our country.
The writer is a Seed Production Specialist, Cotton Development Board, Dhaka Region
