POVERTY AND NUTRITIONAL STATUS IN BANGLADESH IN THE ASIAN CONTEXT AND THE PROSPECT FOR INTRODUCING BIOFORTIFIED RICE

Bangladesh is facing twin problems of meeting hunger and malnutrition for its growing population. Although, food grain production in Bangladesh in recent years has out paced population growth and thus largely solved the problem of hunger, about half of the people in the country are malnurished because of low income and poor food distribution. In this paper, economic condition as well as health and nutritional status of Bangladesh has been compared with some rice producing Asian countries. Further, the prospects as well as constraints of introducing biofortified rice to meet nutritional deficiencies in Bangladesh have been explored. To meet the dual problems of meeting hunger and malnutrition in rice consuming less developed countries like Bangladesh, recently invented nutrition-enriched biofortified rice is expected to play a very important role in future. However, expansion of such type of rice and its wider acceptance by the rural poor will depend on many economic and non-economic factors. Substantial government supports (along with private sector and NGOs) are also needed in research and extension activities