Newly elected government declares agriculture emergency to benefit farmers
Considering the persistently deteriorating condition of the agriculture sector, the newly elected government has decided to declare an agriculture emergency under its first 35 initiatives program.
The Pakistan Business Council (PBC) has been urging the government to declare an agriculture emergency, considering the fact that Pakistan imports around $7 billion worth of agricultural goods annually, while it is commonly regarded as an agricultural economy.
PBC emphasized on declaring an emergency, pointing out that by doing so, the country’s per acre yield of major crops will increase significantly, which will benefit the farmers as well as promote exports.
To ensure that the domestic farmers make profits, the government has reportedly formed a task force for the agriculture sector, under Finance Minister Asad Umer, Advisor on Commerce, Textile and Industry Abdul Razak Dawood and Minister for Foreign Affairs Shah Mahmood Qureshi.
Apart from this, a separate task force for improvement of the livestock sector has also been formed. The minister for national food security is to manage the livestock sector.
The current government is quite unimpressed with the way the preceding government functioned. The sector that remained in constant limelight under the previous government was textile.
The bigshots of the textile sector were provided with various facilities including zero duty on cotton imports from India.
This not only provided abundant benefits to Indian farmers and local textile mills, but also harmed the domestic farmers.
The agriculture sector, on the other hand remained widely neglected as farmers were at the mercy of textile giants.
The agriculture sector reported a negative growth of 0.19% during fiscal year 2015-16.
A committee was formed by the cabinet during PML-N’s tenure to analyze the shortcomings of the agriculture sector and their reasons. It was revealed that cotton production had faced vital stagnation since 1991-92.
Cotton production dropped to 9.9 million bales in 2015-16, while average cotton consumption domestically summed up to around 15 million bales annually. This led the way to Pakistan becoming an importer of cotton.
The reasons for the downfall of the agriculture sector, as listed by this committee, included use of out dated technology, lack of better quality seed, high contamination levels in the produce and lack of solution to the cotton leaf curl virus.
The committee further suggested that cotton production should be aimed at 25 million bales by 2025, planted area should be increased by 45%and crop yield show be taken to 1,200 kg per hectare.
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