"A medium-term National Agriculture Sector Strategy (NASS) will be developed by the government in collaboration with the Agriculture Development Board to improve the agricultural productivity", the Federal Minster for Agriculture said while addressing a workshop on 'National Agriculture Sector Strategy' organised here in co-operation with the Agriculture Development Bank (ADB).
He said the NASS aims at the constraints and priorities for making the agriculture sector more efficient, competitive and profitable. "Rural economy is based on the agricultural productivity which is directly linked to the quality of inputs being used by the farmers", he said.
The minister said the strategy would be prepared taking into account regional, provincial and national requirements and would involve an comprehensive consultative process led by the provinces and facilitated by the federal government as well as other stakeholders, including farmers, traders, processors, NGOs, donor agencies and private academic and research institutions.
Eradication of the rural poverty greatly depends upon the inputs like fertilisers, seeds and pesticides because a poor grower can not afford these inputs. He said the scope of NASS is limited to the growth of rural economy and judicious distribution of growth benefits for poverty alleviation.
The minister informed the participants of the workshop that the NASS is following the Medium Term Development Framework (MTDF) Vision-2030 that stresses upon enhancement of poor's asset through improved land, livestock and access to water along with strengthening the non-farm sector and increase in human capital.
"We can increase our agricultural productivity through narrowing the yield gap especially of small farmers, high efficiency irrigation, ensuring competitive price to farmers, market infrastructure development and compliance with international quality standards and access to foreign markets", the minister elaborated.
There will be an increase in funds for national and provincial agricultural growth. Over the next 10 years, PSDP allocation for the agriculture sector will increase by 50 percent. "There will be an increase in productivity and competitiveness of crops and livestock with yields expected to rise by 3-5 percent annually to catch up with the average of developing countries in the region", he said.
Former federal finance minister Sartaj Aziz speaking on the occasion said that involvement of all the stakeholders in any project was of utmost importance. Usually, he said the strategy was chalked out by the present government and suggested that only technical aspects of the project should be discussed while implementation of the project would rest on new government with its own strategy. He said that global warming had become a big issue and stressed more research agriculture sector uplift.
He said that agriculture policy would be fruitful only if other macro-economic indicators (monetary, credit, trade policy and others) were pro-agriculture. He said that Bangladesh was leading in micro-credit financing, adding that institutional deterioration was a big issue for Pakistan.
Jan Nisar, president, Pakistan Kisan Association, said that India had provided a lot of subsidies to improve agriculture input. The price of DAP bag in India was Rs 400 to Rs 450 while in Pakistan the same DAP bag was sold on Rs 1,400. He asked the government to import DAP from India instead of other countries as the bilateral relation between Pakistan and India were improving. In the prevailing situation, it was difficult for local farmers to meet the WTO obligations.
However, the participants at a workshop on "National Agriculture Sector Strategy (NASS)" on Wednesday were of the view that agriculture-related policies were made by arranging meeting/seminars in five-star hotels and the stakeholders were totally ignored in framing these policies.
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