Five to 10 percent low output in various Rabi crops likely

The current dry spell will result in 5 to 10 percent decrease in the production of different Rabi crops, sources in the Ministry of Food and Agriculture said. They opined that this year Pakistan was facing severe dry spell, which will be negatively impact the production of wheat, sugarcane and gram, particularly gram yield will remain 30 percent below the target.
The sources further said that as far as food security is concerned Pakistan will not face such a situation as it has already about three million tons carryover stocks of wheat while total requirement is nearly 22 million tons per annum. The sources revealed that due to shortage of rainfall, wheat crop in the arid zone will suffer badly as in these areas the irrigation totally depends on rain water, adding that last year 2 million tons out of 24 million tons of wheat was produced in these areas.
Chairman Agri Forum Pakistan, Ibrahim Mughal talking to Business Recoder said that last year Pakistan managed to produce 24 million tons of wheat out of which 2 million tons was contributed by potowhar region, but this year due to dry spell 50 to 60 percent less wheat production is expected in these areas.
He further said that the government has set total wheat production target at 25 million tons for the year 2010, but due to unfavourable weather conditions it may miss the target by 2 million tons. He feared that the government will also miss the sugarcane production target as it was a water consuming crop and the country was facing water shortage in canal fed areas too.
He said that due to less rain the area under sugarcane will decrease from 2.7 to 2.4 million acres and result in low production of the crop. Mughal added that the low rainfall will decrease per acre and overall agriculture production targets of the government, but this will not create food security issue in the country.
Qadir Bux Baloch Agriculture Development Commissioner Ministry of Food and Agriculture, while ruling out any possibility of food crisis during year 2010 accepted that to some extent Pakistan will miss agriculture production targets but still the decrease will not create any crisis.
He said wheat and grams are two main crops of Rabi season, as far as wheat target is concerned the government will not miss it but gram production will remain below the target. Baloch said that the government was ready to tackle such a situation and for the purpose it had started renovating 86 thousand watercourses across the country and at present 60 thousand watercourses are lined, which will reduce the effects of water scarcity.