'Enhanced vegetable yield to help alleviate rural poverty'

Agriculture scientists and experts at a daylong conference here on Thursday stressed the need for pragmatic and focused research, while describing the organic farming as most viable option for enhancing export quality vegetable yield to help alleviate rural poverty.
The national conference on "Increased vegetable production to alleviate poverty in rural areas", organised by the Horticultural Foundation of Pakistan (HFP) was aimed at exploring ways and means for enhancing quality vegetable production.
Speaking as the chief guest, Rector, Federal University of Agriculture Sciences, Professor Dr M. Azam Khan urged upon the scientists to involve themselves in a pragmatic research that could help resolve problems of the farmers. National Agriculture Research Centre Director General Dr Iftikhar Ahmed said on the occasion that scientists had to play their role at this critical juncture and stressed upon the HFP to introduce new methodologies to practically involve all people.
Ministry of Food and Agriculture (Minfal) Crop Commissioner Dr Muhammad Aslam Gill, in his keynote address, stressed upon the scientists to concentrate on focused research, saying that scientists should engage themselves in demand-driven research works.
He said it was unfortunate that out of the total Rs 2.5 billion vegetable exports, the country was spending almost one billion rupees on the import of seeds, adding that there were about 34 species of vegetables growing in the country which needed to be focused for quality production.
He described the vegetable production and horticulture as best tools of rural poverty alleviation and stressed the need for utilising modern technologies for its proper cultivation and processing. Gill said there was also a dire need to switch to hybrid culture instead of breeding programme to help the vegetable sector grow at faster pace with quality and competitive yield besides saving one billion rupees of seed import.
He said Minfal had signed memorandum of understanding (MoU) with some international institutions for bringing hybrid programme into the country. For the production of better quantity and enhanced quantities, he said, the scientists must keep in mid the trade, competitiveness and profitability of crop variety while doing their research. He said organic vegetable production would attract good market value, however, stressed the need for introduction of organic farming as a whole.
Speaking on the occasion, Pakistan Horticulture Foundation (PHF) Vice President Rashid Shad said that due to increasing trend of population the land units were growing too smaller to be utilised for commercial crops like sugarcane.
The way forward, he said, was to introduce vegetable farming in those fields which would not only help best utilisation of the land but would also help the rural population to have profitable business at their own places. He urged upon the policy makers and stakeholders to take out the rural population out of poverty by encouraging them towards vegetable farming.