Bangladesh’s new food security challenge
Bangladesh’s journey from chronic food shortages to near self-sufficiency in staple food production has often been celebrated as one of the country’s greatest development achievements.
Once synonymous with famine and food aid, Bangladesh is now among the world’s largest rice producers, supported by decades of investment in improved seeds, irrigation, agricultural research, and rural infrastructure.
Yet the latest ‘State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026’, jointly published by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), IFAD, UNICEF, the World Food Programme (WFP), and the World Health Organisation (WHO), reveals a troubling paradox. While Bangladesh has largely overcome the challenge of producing enough food, millions of its people still cannot afford nutritious diets.
The report estimates that 26.2 per cent of Bangladesh’s population-about 45.4 million people-experienced moderate or severe food insecurity during 2023-2025. Although this is an improvement from 30.6 per cent during 2014-2016, the figure shows that food security is no longer primarily about food availability; it is increasingly about affordability, nutritional quality, and economic access.
This distinction was first articulated by Nobel laureate AmartyaSen in ‘Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation’ (1981). Sen argued that hunger rarely results from inadequate food production alone. Rather, people suffer food insecurity when they lose the economic and social entitlements needed to obtain food. Bangladesh illustrates this argument well. National food production has increased substantially, yet millions remain unable to purchase healthy diets because rising prices have outpaced household incomes.
The report provides compelling evidence of this affordability crisis. Nearly 38.6 per cent of Bangladeshis-approximately 67.8 million people-could not afford a healthy diet in 2025. Although this is a significant improvement over 62.8 per cent in 2017, the number remains exceptionally high. Meanwhile, the purchasing-power-adjusted cost of a healthy diet increased from US$3.09 per person per day in 2017 to US$4.59 in 2025, making nutritious food increasingly inaccessible for low-income households.
Food inflation has become one of the country’s most persistent economic challenges. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), food inflation remained high throughout much of 2024 and 2025 despite some easing in 2026. Prices of edible oil, eggs, fish, meat, vegetables, and dairy products remain well above pre-pandemic levels. Since poorer households spend a large share of their income on food, higher prices force many families to replace nutrient-rich foods with cheaper staples, satisfying hunger while sacrificing nutrition.
These pressures have been intensified by the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, exchange-rate depreciation, and climate-related production losses. Bangladesh’s dependence on imported wheat, edible oil, pulses, sugar, and fertiliser makes it especially vulnerable to global market volatility.
These interconnected challenges reflect the ideas of German sociologist Ulrich Beck in ‘Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity’ (1992). Beck argued that contemporary societies increasingly face “manufactured risks” created by economic, political, technological, and environmental systems. Bangladesh’s food insecurity today is shaped not only by agricultural production but also by inflation, climate change, international conflicts, exchange-rate movements, and weaknesses in domestic supply chains. Food security has therefore become a broader governance challenge.
Climate change further complicates the situation. Bangladesh remains highly vulnerable to floods, cyclones, droughts, salinity intrusion, heatwaves, and riverbank erosion. According to the ‘Global Report on Food Crises 2026’ and the World Food Programme, increasingly frequent climate shocks continue to disrupt agricultural production and rural livelihoods, raising the prices of vegetables, fish, and other nutritious foods. Climate resilience is therefore essential for long-term food security.
The nutritional consequences are particularly evident among children. The UN report shows that 25.1 per cent of children under five remain stunted, while 10.7 per cent suffer from wasting.
At the same time, 5.8 per cent are overweight, illustrating the growing “double burden of malnutrition.” Only 37.6 per cent of children aged six to twenty-three months receive the minimum dietary diversity, while exclusive breastfeeding declined from 64.1 per cent in 2012 to 53.3 per cent in 2024. Moreover, 37.6 per cent of women aged 15-49 suffer from anaemia, highlighting persistent nutritional inequality that affects maternal health, child development, and future productivity.
Urbanisation has added another layer of vulnerability. Nearly two-fifths of Bangladesh’s population now lives in urban areas, where households depend almost entirely on purchased food. Rising prices therefore have an immediate impact on low-income urban families, often forcing them to reduce dietary diversity to meet basic living expenses.
Bangladesh’s response must now move beyond the traditional focus on rice production. Greater investment is needed in nutrition-sensitive agriculture that promotes vegetables, fruits, pulses, fisheries, dairy, and livestock alongside staple grains.
Climate-smart agriculture, reduced post-harvest losses, improved cold storage facilities, more efficient supply chains, and stronger market competition can improve both food availability and affordability. At the same time, social protection programmes should prioritise nutritional quality over calorie provision alone, enabling vulnerable households to access protein- and micronutrient-rich foods.
Bangladesh deserves recognition for dramatically reducing hunger over the past three decades. Yet the latest UN findings show that the country’s next challenge is fundamentally different. Success should no longer be measured solely by the size of the rice harvest or public food stocks, but by whether every citizen can consistently afford a healthy and balanced diet.
As AmartyaSen reminded us, food security depends on people’s ability to access food, not simply on its existence. Bangladesh’s next agricultural revolution must therefore become a nutritional revolution that places affordability, resilience, and human well-being at the centre of national development.
(The writer is a researcher and development professional).
