LAHORE: Pakistan needs to invest in agricultural research, controlling post-harvest losses, introducing modern technology and innovations and following international standards and certifications besides motivating commercial attaches for promoting our products in their respective markets to boost the agricultural exports and ensure prosperity for the country and the farmers.
This was the crux of a workshop titled ‘modern tools for sustainable agriculture’ arranged by the CropLife Pakistan at Muzaffarabad. Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) Chairman Dr. Ghulam Muhammad Ali chaired the proceedings while it was addressed among others by the CropLife Executive Director Rashid Ahmad and experts including Muhammad Asim, Tallal Hakeem, Murtaza Qaddusi, Muhammad Shoaib and Development Consultant Babar Malik.
Speaking at the workshop, PARC Chairman Dr. Ghulam Muhammad Ali regretted that Pakistan’s allocation for agricultural research is only 0.18 per cent of the agricultural GDP while Sri Lanka is allocated 0.62 per cent, China 0.5 per cent, Nepal 0.45 per cent and India 0.29 per cent of their agricultural GDP. He said Pakistan has a big potential to improve its agricultural exports and earn precious foreign exchange. “We can export our produce to GCC countries which are only an hour’s flight far from Pakistan while they are importing from far flung countries like Brazil etc,” he added.
He said that PARC is focusing on olive production. Extraction ratio in Balochistan is around 29 per cent while globally it is around 20 per cent which shows how favourable environment of Pakistan is for olive oil production.
Dr. Ghulam Muhammad Ali said that our annual import bill of oil, which consists of palm oil and soya oil, is US$ 3 billion. He claimed that palm oil is not used world over because of its being harmful for human health but it is being used in Pakistan on large scale which causes different diseases. He said we can promote sowing of sunflower and canola to replace palm oil to save precious foreign exchange as well as human health. Similarly, there is a scope of sowing lentils in the country. He said growers should also be urged to grow sesame for reducing our edible oil import bill. The PARC Chairman said that for all this we need to invest in research heavily while promote indigenization in agricultural machinery. He disclosed that PARC is working on promotion of Avocado and Kiwi in different parts of the country which are expensive to import. He regretted that budgetary allocation for PARC only caters its salaries and medical while they were even unable to pay pensions in recent past.
He said that agricultural land should not be allowed to be used for housing societies instead only non-productive land should be used for setting-up new cities. Unfortunately, in our country new housing societies are being setup by cutting mango orchards or other agricultural land. CropLife Bio-Technology & Seed Committee lead Muhammad Asim in his presentation said prevailing trend suggest that there will be 50 per cent more food and feed requirements by the year 2050 to meet the growing population which would be 2.2 billion plus. However, climate change may result in 17 per cent losses in harvesting and a significant 20 per cent loss in arable land per capita by this time.
He said agriculture is undergoing transformation while advances in agriculture over the past 80 years demonstrate that major strides that modern agriculture has made is enabling farmers to grow more from less. The amount of arable land and natural resources on the planet is fixed; meanwhile the world population is growing at exponential rates. Continued investment in innovation will enable agriculture to continue a more efficient and more sustainable trajectory.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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