Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Livestock Sardar Yar Mohammad Rind has said intensive farming is necessary for food security and check hunger and malnutrition.
"Not only increase in production is needed, the quality of production and environment concerns are also to be addressed by scientists and experts," the minister said addressing the inaugural session of the workshop on tradition and non-traditional approaches on intensive farming and resource management here on Wednesday.
We have to focus on one issues that is high and quality production with less harm to environment, he said adding, this is possible when more non-traditional production methods are also to be encouraged.
This may include use of remote sensing equipment, research on the use of latest varieties and developing of varieties in short time.
He said research institutions such as ICARDA have produced varieties in 5 years, reducing traditional time requirement of 12 to 15 years.
Water is also precious commodity. Harvesting of water is necessary by building small catchments in the arid and dry areas. We have also to adopt non-traditional production methods for high yielding crops and livestock production, he added.
The minister further said protection of environment and soil are also important.
Such protection can be achieved by balanced use of water, fertilisers and pesticides.
So the scientists and researchers have many challenges to transform present farming of age old traditional systems into modern ones to employ resources efficiently, he said adding, we acknowledge that there are financial, educational and natural constraints, but improvement is to be brought in the systems by all the stakeholders and the government will play its key role.
Expressing confidence on the scholars, researchers and policy makers to make collective efforts to increase productivity in the country, the minister said this is a matter of importance that in our future research and training activities we must give more focus to practical aspects and problems confronting agriculture.
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