How a temperate summer threatens country's food security

The Bangla month Baishakh is about to come to an end but the peak summer has conspicuously been absent. Both Chaitra and Baishakh have relatively been cooler this time. In fact, so cooler that it would be impossible to remember any moderate summer like this in people's living memory! Temperature below 30 degree at this time of the year has ever remained unimaginable. But this year has been a witness to this climatic quirk.

No doubt, people are enjoying this pleasant weather at a time when they were supposed to smart under the scorching heat. Well, for days rains started falling unannounced at times intermittently and at other times heavily. The sky remained overcast with no scope for the sun to smile. This was more like the monsoon proper. Still dark clouds hover in one corner or other even if rains have not been falling for the past three or four days.

Is this a sign of early monsoon? One of the oddities of climate change? Oddity or not, moderate temperature of this kind has been welcome to the people. But not to the farmers of haor areas in Sylhet and Sunamganj where flash floods have inundated paddy fields as far as eye can see. These are, moreover, the areas where farmers depend only on this paddy crop. No other crop can be grown there because for most of the year the paddy fields remain under water. Paddy grown in this area also meets a good portion of the national demand for food.

It seems Bangladesh has a difficult choice: even the cooler summer looks less welcome if the rains spoil farmers' main crop. Harvest of Boro in wider areas of the country is about to begin and if the rains continue, yield everywhere will suffer. Not a very enjoyable prospect. Already the country is reeling from energy shock and if its Boro paddy in fields gets damaged, it will be a double blow to the country's economy. Bangladesh can hardly afford this and the prospect of enjoying a cooler summer will vanish in thin air. 

One of the side stories is that farmers cannot manage farm labourers to harvest their crops. The farmers in haor areas alone are not facing this problem, those in other areas face this routinely. If there were adequate paddy reapers and combined harvesters, farmers did not have to suffer losses to this extent.

In haor areas inundation of paddy fields and the consequent damage to the crops are going to deal a severe blow to farmers' food solvency. The national food security will also be put on the line to a substantial degree. Surely, heavy rainfall in the upper reaches across the border damaged crops in the past as well. But haor protection dam was constructed to save the harvest. However, the bad news is that flood protection barriers in most cases are not constructed very seriously and hardly repaired in time.

Now the question is, if climate change changes the pattern of paddy cultivation, can Bangladesh adapt to the situation? In wider swathes of the country, primarily in the low-lying greater Barishal and Faridpur, farmers could cultivate only two crops Aus and Aman simultaneously. Aus could be harvested early in Shraban and Aman harvest began in Agrahayan. The same areas now produce Boro as the main crop. Aus cultivation is a rarity and even Aman is selectively cultivated. So farmers have adapted to the new system quite well. They can do so if weather does not behave more capriciously.

In that case, they may have to push ahead the cultivation season by 15-20 days. But more important will be the selection of the appropriate rice variety with early harvest by the 15-20 days' margin. Agricultural scientists have proved their mettle by bringing newer varieties suitable for Bangladesh condition. In case of an advanced monsoon, they are unlikely to be found wanting in playing their role properly. But then the government also has to facilitate the research projects and plan for mechanisation of agriculture in the country. Since farm hands are in short supply, better it would be to mechanise agriculture in order to sow and reap crops within a short time.

Pleasant summer would be more pleasant if only farmers can harvest their standing crops without sustaining losses in the field due to drought or floods. Of course, farmers will find a more temperate weather quite to their liking because they have to work in the open field. But there is no guarantee this year's pattern will remain so next year as well. Capricious climate change may have further oddities up its sleeve.