Agriculture Minister Mohammad Amin Ur Rashid on Thursday told the Parliament that Bangladesh has around 2.18 crore acres of arable land, accounting for nearly 60 percent of the country's total area.
“The total arable land area of Bangladesh is about 88,29,000 hectares (2.18 crore acres), which is about 59.7 percent of the total area of the country,” he said, while replying to a question from MP Khairul Kabir Khokan (Narsingdi-1).
Speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmad tabled the question-and-answer session for Thursday, immediately after the day’s business started at 3:00pm.
The agriculture minister said a huge amount of cultivable land is being lost every year due to unplanned urbanisation, housing and industrialisation in Bangladesh.
To address this situation and ensure the country's food security, the government has recently taken several tough and significant steps, including the enactment of the Land Use Control and Agricultural Land Protection Act, 2026.
Amin Ur Rashid said the government is providing quality seeds, irrigation facilities, and agricultural loans on easy terms to farmers to convert one-crop or two-crop lands into three-crop lands, so that farmers are motivated to cultivate their land instead of leasing or selling it for non-agricultural purposes.