THE BLOG OF ARIF
Bangladesh Needs an Agriculture Lobby. Here Is the Nine-Point Agenda It Should Fight For
Italy built one in 1944. Eighty years on, it shapes national law. Bangladesh has none.
Md. Arif Uddin | Founder & Managing Director, AgriDew Biochar Ltd. | 27 October 2026
Every serious farming nation has one. Italy has Coldiretti: about 1.6 million members, roughly 70 per cent of the farm enterprises registered with its chambers of commerce, and a standing seat at the table on taxation, food labelling and land policy. It is not without critics, who dispute its membership arithmetic and its positions on pesticides, but no one disputes its power.
Bangladesh, where agriculture still employs close to four in ten workers, has no equivalent. We have ministries, research institutes and NGOs. We do not have an organised, non-partisan body that negotiates for the farmer the way a chamber of commerce negotiates for industry.
This article is a proposal for what such a lobby should stand for. Seven points, each grounded in the Government’s own data.
1. Real food first; synthetic and ultra-processed food last
Bangladesh imports more than 85 per cent of its fertiliser, and the World Bank reports the subsidy bill nearly quadrupled from Tk 7,200 crore in FY20 to Tk 28,000 crore in FY25. That is dependency, not food security. A farm lobby should press for a national priority order: organic and low-input production first, synthetic inputs as a supplement, processed food at the margin. Italy shows this is not a niche ambition. Organic farming now covers about 20 per cent of its utilised agricultural area, some 2.5 million hectares, within sight of the EU’s 25 per cent target for 2030. Bangladesh has no such target. It should.
2. No reclassification of two-crop land
The Department of Agricultural Extension estimates that 2,500 to 3,000 hectares of cultivable land are converted to non-agricultural use every year; older studies put the loss far higher. In May 2024 Italy’s Decree-Law 63 banned new ground-mounted solar on land zoned agricultural, with exemptions for agrivoltaics, and Parliament converted it into law within two months. Whatever one thinks of that particular energy trade-off, the principle is the one Bangladesh needs: double-cropped land is a strategic asset, and moving it to industrial or residential class should require a statutory bar, not a district officer’s signature.
3. A 25 per cent revenue assurance for the farmer
An Asian Development Bank study found Bangladeshi producers receive under 40 per cent of the consumer price for horticultural produce, as low as 27 per cent for red amaranth. The Centre for Policy Dialogue’s 2026 value-chain study found green chilli marked up 116 per cent between farm gate and retail, while rice farmers kept 50.8 per cent of the final price. A lobby should campaign for a floor: a guaranteed minimum farm-gate share, or a cost-plus-25 per cent reference price for key crops, modelled on India’s Minimum Support Price but enforced through procurement rather than announcements.
4. Break the intermediary climax
CPD was careful: a handful of large traders is not automatically a syndicate. But for six of ten staple items, retailers depend on urban commission agents, and the longer the chain the larger the gap. The fix is structural, not punitive: farmer-owned aggregation cooperatives, cold chains, and published wholesale prices. Coldiretti built Italy’s largest direct-sales network, with farmers’ markets even in Milan’s city blocks. Bangladesh can copy the model.
5. Biochar as soil policy, not a side project
The Soil Resource Development Institute reports that most Bangladeshi soils hold under 1.5 per cent organic matter against a 2.5 per cent healthy minimum; a recent SRDI map puts 78 per cent of the country’s land below 1 per cent. Rice husk, which we burn or dump, can become stable carbon that stays in the soil for centuries while raising water-holding capacity and nutrient retention. The EU’s Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming Regulation (2024/3012) now certifies biochar as a permanent removal and allows group certification for smallholders. The lobby should push biochar onto the subsidised input list beside urea. Disclosure: I run a biochar company. The soil data is the Government’s.
6. Twenty per cent of carbon revenue to the farmer
If any project proponent registers Bangladeshi farmland with Verra, Puro.earth, Gold Standard or any other registry, the farmer whose land hosts the removal should receive a statutory minimum of 20 per cent of gross credit revenue. Kenya’s Climate Change (Carbon Markets) Regulations 2024 mandate 40 per cent of earnings to communities for land-based projects on public and community land, and 25 per cent for non-land-based projects. Bangladesh has no rule at all. Twenty per cent is modest, auditable, and would stop farmers being treated as free sequestration sites.
7. Redesign the subsidy so new entrants qualify
The World Bank found the largest 20 per cent of landholders capture half of all fertiliser subsidy benefits; the smallest 40 per cent receive 13 per cent. A universal, volume-based subsidy rewards size, not stewardship. The redesign: shift part of the Tk 17,000 to 28,000 crore pool into per-farmer smart-card transfers, which the FY27 budget has begun; tie a tranche to measured soil organic matter improvement; and reserve a window for new agri-entrepreneurs with no prior landholding.
8. Anchor the agenda in NDC 3.0
Bangladesh’s Third Nationally Determined Contribution, submitted to the UNFCCC in September 2025 ahead of COP30, is the framework this lobby should plug into. It pledges a 6.39 per cent cut below business-as-usual by 2035 unconditionally and a further 13.92 per cent with international support, against a 2022 base year, with agriculture and forestry carrying 11.46 per cent of the sectoral effort through rice-methane control, livestock feeding and reforestation. It costs delivery at about USD 116.8 billion over a decade, USD 90.2 billion of it external, and names Article 6 carbon markets, green bonds and blended finance as funding routes. It also, for the first time, embeds just transition. What it lacks, as the Centre for Policy Dialogue has noted, is implementation detail for agriculture: incentives, data and monitoring. That gap is exactly where a farm lobby, and a biochar soil-carbon pathway, should insert itself.
9. Redesign the Climate Change Trust Fund’s grant policy by applicant type
The Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund has received Tk 4,151 crore from the national budget since FY2009-10 and approved 985 projects, of which 924 went to ministries and divisions and only 61 to NGOs, the latter routed through PKSF, with no window at all for private companies. Annual allocation fell to Tk 100 crore in FY2024-25, and the Environment Adviser has publicly called it insufficient. A 2013 TIB study found NGO selection shaped by political influence, with disbursement skewed away from the most exposed coastal districts. The fix is not less money but a different architecture: four separate windows, each with its own eligibility, due-diligence and reporting rules, for non-profit organisations, registered NGOs, foundations, and privately owned companies. A company that captures carbon in rice-husk biochar or builds a cold chain should compete for results-based grants on the same footing as a ministry. Published criteria, open calls and a public project register would do more for engagement than any increase in the headline figure.
The point
None of this requires new money. It requires an organised constituency. Coldiretti was founded in 1944 by one politician and a handful of smallholders. Bangladesh’s farmers feed 170 million people. They deserve a voice that can do the same.
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References
- World Bank, Bangladesh fertiliser subsidy analysis, reported in Dhaka Tribune (2026): subsidy Tk 7,200 crore FY20 to Tk 28,000 crore FY25; top 20% of landholders receive 50% of benefits; >85% of fertiliser imported.
- Department of Agricultural Extension, seminar remarks reported in The Daily Star / Asia News Network (January 2025): 2,500 to 3,000 ha of cultivable land converted annually; 88.29 lakh ha cultivable land (2023).
- Asian Development Bank, Dysfunctional Horticulture Value Chains and the Need for Modern Marketing Infrastructure: The Case of Bangladesh (reported in The Business Standard).
- Centre for Policy Dialogue, Food Value Chain: Bangladesh’s Market System, Profit, and Middlemen (July 2026), reported in Dhaka Tribune.
- Soil Resource Development Institute (SRDI) and BARI findings, reported in Prothom Alo, Mongabay / Eco-Business, and The Daily Star (2023–2026).
- FiBL and IFOAM Organics International, The World of Organic Agriculture 2026; SINAB/ISMEA, Bio in cifre 2024: Italy organic UAA approx. 20%, 2.5 million ha.
- Italy, Decree-Law No. 63 of 15 May 2024 (Decreto Agricoltura), converted into Law No. 101 of 12 July 2024, Article 5; coverage by Reuters, pv magazine and Osborne Clarke.
- Coldiretti: membership and representation figures per Coldiretti and Wikipedia; critical analysis in Il Foglio (February 2024) and L’Espresso (June 2024).
- Republic of Kenya, Climate Change (Carbon Markets) Regulations, 2024 (gazetted 17 May 2024); analysis by Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr and Oraro & Company Advocates.
- Regulation (EU) 2024/3012 on a Union certification framework for permanent carbon removals, carbon farming and carbon storage in products; Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/285 (biochar carbon removal methodology).
- Ministry of Finance, Bangladesh, FY2025-26 and FY2026-27 budget documents, reported in The Daily Star and Dhaka Tribune.
- Government of Bangladesh, Third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0), UNFCCC NDC Registry, September 2025; analysis by Fahmida Khatun (CPD) in The Daily Star, 7 October 2025.
- Bangladesh Climate Change Trust: figures stated in Parliament by the Environment Minister, 15 April 2026 (Prothom Alo); Environment Adviser’s letter to the Finance Adviser reported in The Financial Express, May 2025; Transparency International Bangladesh study on BCCTF NGO projects, October 2013; PKSF project records.