Demographic pressure, technological innovation and welfare: The case of the agriculture of Bangladesh

In the early years of its introduction, the HYV technology was widely regarded as a technical breakthrough that would bring about rapid agrarian progress and a revolutionary improvement in the standard of living of the farm population. Three decades later the promise of the new technology remains unfulfilled. This article argues that the adoption of the HYV technology in the agriculture of Bangladesh was determined mainly by an acute demographic pressure. Since the non‐agricultural sectors did not expand sufficiently rapidly, there was a tremendous pressure on agriculture to accommodate the additional workforce. The imperative to employ a larger workforce and feed a rising population forced the farmers to adopt the labour‐intensive, land‐augmenting HYV technology. The welfare of the farmers did not show any secular increase with the switch to the new technology.