A systematic review on good agricultural practices for improving food safety and agricultural sustainability in Bangladesh

Food safety and security is a rising apprehension throughout the world but is particularly dominant in Bangladesh. Agriculture is one of the important sectors for the country and its sustainability is hampered due to the indiscriminate use of agrochemicals and unstable market price of agricultural commodities. As a consequence, lower soil organic matter (SOM) content, deteriorated crop production, augmented food safety and security threats, and adverse effects on the environment and human health are identified in the agriculture sector in Bangladesh. The perception of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) was familiarized in Bangladesh in 2020 to ensure environmentally safe crop production, protection of worker’s and consumer’s health and to export of quality high value crops. As the concept of GAP is comparatively new to Bangladesh, it is still broad and unclear, which makes its usage and application problematic. Mentioning the above points, a literature review on existing global evidence have been conducted to get the advantages of GAP and to recognize the serious blockades to the implementation of GAP. The review showed that agriculture subsidized about 11.20% to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Bangladesh. On the contrary, above 95% of the pesticides damage useful soil microorganisms and SOM is less than 1% but by maintaining GAP for agrochemicals water quality can be improved and runoff loss can be reduced to almost 40%. However, the review has also recognized obstacles to broader acceptance of GAP, largely characterized into rules and standards of production, expansion, finance and marketing of product. This review could be beneficial for planners and the government of Bangladesh to produce comprehensive application procedures for GAP by presently implementing the largest agricultural project termed program on agricultural and rural transformation for nutrition, entrepreneurship, and resilience in Bangladesh (PARTNER).