The major crops, accounting for 32.5 percent of agricultural value added, depicted a negative growth of 3.6 percent as against an impressive 17.8 percent growth of last year.
Besides measuring from a high base of last year, major crops registered decline primarily on account of a 13.0 percent less production of cotton (12.4 million bales as against 14.3 million bales last year) owing to adverse weather conditions.
The agriculture was subjected to adverse weather conditions during the year 2005-06, which adversely affected the performance of agricultural sector.
This is once again a reminder that exclusive focus on few major crops, heavily dependent on Mother Nature is not a viable policy and due attention must be accorded to other components of agriculture, such as, livestock, minor crops fishing and forestry.
According to official sources with economic growth at 6.6 percent in 2005-06, Pakistan's economy has grown at an average rate of almost 7.0 percent per annum during the last four years and over 7.5 percent per annum in the last three years and hence positioned itself as one of the fastest growing economies in the Asian region.
The agriculture sector grew by only 2.5 percent, as against 6.7 percent of last year and the 4.2 percent target for the year, with major crops and forestry registering a negative growth of 3.6 percent and 5.7 percent, respectively.
Sugarcane is another major crop, which registered a negative growth of 6.2 percent (from 47.2 million tons to 44.3 million tons). Rice and maize, the two other major crops, however performed well with rice production increasing by 10.4 percent and maize production was up by 27.3 percent.
Despite the impressive performance of these two crops, these failed to compensate the decline in production of cotton and sugarcane. Wheat production remained more or less at last year's level with a marginal increase of 0.4 percent, (21.7 million tons as against 21.6 million tons).
Livestock with almost 50 percent contribution in agriculture has been the only saving grace as this sector grew by 8.0 percent, as against 2.3 percent of last year and hence took the overall agricultural growth to a positive side.
Furthermore, during the current fiscal year (2005-06), the availability of water for Kharif 2005, for the crops such as rice, sugarcane and cotton, has been 5.5 percent more than the normal supplies and 19.8 percent more than last year's Kharif.
Excessive winter rainfalls, (January - March 2005) along with melting of snow on mountains top were responsible for higher than normal availability of water during Kharif 2005. The water availability for Rabi season (for major crop such as wheat) was 17.3 percent less than the normal availability but 29.8 percent more than last year's Rabi.
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