Seven Decades of Changing Seasonal Land Use for Rice Production in Bangladesh, 1947-2019: Trends, Patterns and Implications

Employing Bangladeshi national data on rice production, area and yield disaggregated by dry (irrigated) and wet (rainfed) seasons over a period of 73 years (1947-2019, this paper investigates annual and seasonal dimensions of Bangladeshi rice culture and explores trends, emerging patterns and their implications with a focus on the Green Revolution period since the late 1960s. We find that: (i) structural breaks differ between dry and wet seasons for the same variable or among different variables; (ii) annual and seasonal outputs, areas and yields of overall or HYV rice exhibit slowdown in their increase in the last decade or so; (iii) the diffusion of the HYV rice technology exhibit differential patterns between seasons; (iv) the increasing percentage area under the dry season rice crop has significantly underpinned the increased annual rice yield; and (v) growth in outputs and yields of HYV rice exhibit significant differential patterns by dry and wet seasons. This is the first long-term study of its kind and contributes to the existing literature in several important ways by (a) investigates rice production in Bangladesh disaggregated by broad crop seasons (dry and wet); (b) identifying structural breaks employing a priori reasoning, scatter plots and appropriate econometric tests instead of applying arbitrary cut-off points; and (c) exploring implications of the seasonal dimensions of rice cultivation in Bangladesh.