Starting from Ishikawa’s hypothesis that irrigation is the ‘leading input’ in Asian rice agriculture, this paper examines the role of water control in Bangladesh’s agricultural development from 1949 to 1981. Water control–the provision of the right amount of water at the right time–is here defined to encompass drainage and flood control as well as irrigation. An analysis of inter-district variations in water control, fertilizer use, and the adoption of high-yielding varieties points to strong technical complementarities among these inputs. Water control differs from other inputs in that it generally requires prior capital investment and institutional arrangements for coordinated action among many producers. The combination of input complementarity and these special attributes suggests that water control may pose the key technological constraint to agricultural growth in Bangladesh. A district-level analysis of the relationship between water control and agricultural growth, crop yields and cropping pattern further confirms the central importance of water control in Bangladesh’s agriculture.

This paper examines the role of irrigation in agricultural development in Bangladesh by quantifying the relationship of fertilizer consumption and adoption of HYVs with irrigation, and estimating the effect of irrigation on the intensity of land use and the growth of crop output and productivity, using the 1983/84 district level cross-section data. It supplements the work by Boyce, who conducted a similar analysis with the 1976/77 district level data estimated by the Agricultural Census. The results show a stronger relationship between irrigation and the growth of crop output and productivity than that shown by Boyce and further confirms his conclusion that irrigation poses the key technological constraint to agricultural development in Bangladesh

This paper presents, estimates of supply response parameters for major agricultural crops in Bangladesh. Though sufficiently large samples were not available for estimation from time series data, the importance of these estimates for agricultural policy analysis and planning makes the task worthwhile. Ordinary least squares techniques were used in each case to estimate the acreage and output supply elasticities. The rice crop has also been disaggregated into all its major components, e.g., Aman, Aus, Boro, etc. A large number of Rabi crops have also been investigated. Elasticity estimates for group commodities, e.g., foodgrain, vegetables spices, etc. have also been obtained. The ‘model’ supply functions yield good results in most cases and the estimated supply elasticities are comparable to those obtained for other developing countries.