Agriculture Adviser Lt Gen (retd) Md Jahangir Alam Chowdhury today said that providing incentives to farmers often faces various obstacles, unlike incentives extended to large businesses.

“There are no barriers when incentives are given to big businessmen. But when it comes to providing incentives to farmers, many obstacles arise,” he said at a workshop in Dhaka today.

The adviser said that industry owners take loans from banks but often fail to repay them, while farmers struggle to access credit.

At the same time, industrialists receive bank loans at only 2 percent interest and are granted waivers, along with various other incentives.

“These farmers are the backbone of the nation; we say this verbally, but it is not reflected in practice. Farmers do not receive fair prices for their produce,” he said.

He added that when farmers fail to get fair prices, they are often forced to discard their crops.

“We express sympathy for a few days, and journalists publish one or two reports. But when it comes to compensating farmers for their losses by providing incentives, we face obstacles,” he said.

“If such a situation continues, farmers will not survive. And without the development of farmers, the country cannot develop. Therefore, to develop agriculture, farmers must be made economically self-reliant,” he added.

After failing to shield potato farmers from a price crash last season, the government is now struggling to deliver cash incentives even as harvesting of this year’s early varieties has already begun.

In early December, the Ministry of Agriculture decided to provide more than Tk 110 crore in cash incentives, in addition to the Tk 150 crore already allocated for subsidies in this fiscal year, to potato farmers who incurred losses in the 2024–25 season, according to government documents seen by The Daily Star.

On January 25, the adviser said at an event that the government plans to provide incentives to potato farmers following surplus production in the last season.

Organised by the Ministry of Agriculture, the workshop titled “Transforming Bangladesh Agriculture: Outlook 2050” was held at the InterContinental Dhaka.