Die Entwicklung der Landwirtschaft in Bangladesh und Pakistan

Abstract Agriculture is the most important sector of Pakistan’s and Bangladesh’s economy. However, the development of agriculture was far more successful in the western than in the eastern wing of undivided Pakistan. This is due to the great difference in natural conditions of agricultural production on the one hand and to the different historical development of the land tenure system and the resulting discrepancy in the size distribution of farms and the land ownership pattern, on the other. The problem of disparity in the agricultural development of undivided Pakistan must, however, not be reduced to the contrast between East and West Pakistan. Even within the agricultural sector of West Pakistan traditional income disparities between regions and classes widened considerably because of the different extent to which farmers benefitted from the rapid progress of agricultural technology. To overcome these disparities, agricultural policy will have to be aimed at a more equitable distribution of incomes instead of focussing on overall growth only. Some of the measures serving this purpose are discussed in the article. In East Pakistan the relatively modest achievements made in agriculture in the sixties, were seriously affected by the natural calamity in November 1970 and the civil war as well as the Indo-Pakistan war in 1971. The requirements for the future development of the agriculture of Bangladesh are determined by the tremendous task of reconstruction facing the young country, and by the necessity to continue and improve those policies for increasing productivity that were introduced in the sixties. Some of the most important measures are indicated in the article.