Technology Comparison

Q. Compare the technologies generally use in agriculture sector of Bangladesh with that of any developed country?

There are several dissimilarities between the technologies use in agriculture sector of Bangladesh with that of any develop country. Actually, the country with a strong economic base is called developed country. That would be respectable for a developed country like the United States, Germany, Australia, Canada, and UK since they start from a higher economic base. But those countries built largely on manufacturing and technology rather than agriculture. Bangladesh is a agro based country where agriculture is the main or major contributor of the GDP. About 63% of the labor forces are employed in agriculture with about 57% being employed in cropping sector. The climate of Bangladesh is appropriate for agricultural operations especially for crop production. Fertile land, suitable climate, available labor forces has made Bangladesh’s economy as an agro-based economy. Crop production system is highly labor intensive here and there is a greater workforce available here. Rice is the principal crop in Bangladesh, and the country ranks 4^th in the world rice production. Bangladesh earns lots of foreign exchanges exporting crops in international market. Increasing foreign exchange earnings through agricultural exports is one of the national agriculture policies. Plough and bull are still famous technology here for crop production. Technological depreciation cost is minimum in the third world countries means the substitution cost of technology is higher as well as the third world countries like Bangladesh use a particular technology for a long time rather then substitute it. On the other hand in the developed world a technology is replaced by a new one as soon as a new technology developed. And the replacement rate of old technology is slow in Bangladesh, the technological depreciation cost is minimum rather then developed world.

So, there are differences in use of technologies in agriculture sector of Bangladesh with a developed country, and such are given below:

• Though tractor and power tiller is used in agriculture sector, plough and bull is still in practice at the very grass root level farmers of Bangladesh but in a developed country, the farmers are totally depends on tractor and power tiller for cropping.
• For fertilizer spreading on the cutlivated land, farmer of Bangladesh do not use any machinary, they do it manually. On the other hand, developed country use plane to do the same thing.
• For climatic hazards or famine farmers of Bangladesh are totally depending on fate. They totally depend on climate. But in a developed country there are enough technologies to mitigate the disaster or other climatic hazard.
• In a developed country, they get prepared for any agriculture production depending on the weather forecasting result. But in Bangladesh, there are little scopes for such forecasting. As well as our most of the farmers don’t depend on weather forecasting results.
• Through Advanced technology, developed country can forecast the production, but in Bangladesh there is no such technology.
• Agriculture in a developed country is not labor intensive production. Only one skilled farmer is capable to cultivate hectors of land with his one tractor. In Bangladesh, the total scenario is absolutely reversed.
• Rice processing system in husking mill is quite lengthy and time consuming in Bangladesh. A lot of workers are engaged in drying and processing of paddy in husking mills. But in a developed country paddy is directly bring to rice from the field using very modern technology.
• Developed countries are very expert in producing bio-technological food items. But Bangladeshi farmers are not getting HYV seeds still now.
• Technology diffusion rate is very higher in developed country than Bangladesh especially in using crop diversity. In Bangladesh, some research institutions were innovated some wheat and rice varieties. But due to slow diffusion rate, farmers often fail to adopt those technologies.
  

Technology transformation takes place from developed to developing countries. Available fund and education or skill level and research and projects make developed countries able to innovated new modern tools and techniques. But third world countries generally import techniques from them. But potential grows for developing countries as developed countries are becoming more interested on manufacturing and technology rather than agriculture.