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Seminar on “Agriculture Bio-diversity and Food Security” Reported by Jabin Tahmina Haque
An in-house seminar on “Agriculture biodiversity and food security” takes place at Unnayan Onneshan’s conference room on November 22, 2009 as a part of its regular in-house seminar series. The seminar starts up with the presentation of Mohammed Abdul Baten, Research Associate of the organisation, by linking importance of agriculture bio-diversity to food security. The research anchors upon the notion of food security adopt from FAO (1996) and tried to identify the causes of food shortage by reviewing the traditional and current agriculture practices in Bangladesh. The paper further shows current initiatives of the government in the agriculture sector and their shortcomings to achieve food security. He raises a moral question of retaining of inherited seed rights of the farmers and showed how they are loosing their seed rights by using High Yielding Varieties and becoming consumer of some multinational companies like Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta. Advocating in favour of organic agriculture he reveals the potentiality of organic farming in Bangladesh, which are environment friendly and the return in production is higher compared with that of HYV, by providing some significant evidences in Bangladesh. The participants point the research as an important one, specially in relation to the food security. However, they are seeking for some evidence how bio-diversity is reducing and how our local culture is affected by the bio-diversity. |